It’s official NRL fans. The teams have been announced for week two of this year’s finals.
Of course as history shows, it’s probably best to take today’s four line-ups with a very generous grain of salt given team list Tuesday is, in fact, team list ‘Ruse-day’.
Forget ducks and drakes. This is elephants and echidnas.
What you see today is almost certainly not what you’ll get come the weekend.
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Injured players being named (hello Stephen Crichton). Healthy players being left out or named out of position. Reserves benches extended and extended once again.
It’s all part of the game to keep opponents guessing—and, by association, the rest of us too.
Week one of the NRL finals was the perfect example.
While the final two games were relatively unscathed, there were a few late switches in the Warriors-Panthers match.
Meanwhile the Storm and Bulldogs swung seismic changes to the squads they announced last Tuesday.
After talking up Tyran Wishart all week, 22-year-old halfback Jonah Pezet was a late addition to Craig Bellamy’s starting line-up for Melbourne, with Jack Howarth also coming into the centres before kick-off.
For the Bulldogs, Jacob Kiraz and Josh Curran were switched into the top thirteen at late notice with Harry Hayes and Toby Sexton also promoted from the reserves bench by Cameron Ciraldo. Reed Mahoney was dumped altogether.
Did any of these clandestine moves make a difference to the outcome? Probably, but we’ll never know for certain.
Looking ahead, the question isn’t who gets the Tuesday nod as the Raiders prepare to tackle the Sharks and the Bulldogs host the Panthers.
But rather which selections are real and which are just smoke and mirrors?
Stay tuned and all will be revealed—an hour before kick-off.