BY DAN

Hello and welcome to the future. Mostly.

As you know, the second trial is the one in which Stick names something approximating his expected round one team. So this team list takes on additional significance. Unless someone does something very good or very bad this Thursday, this is the closest thing we can expect to what we’ll see in Vegas. How exciting!

Well, kinda. I think you can take the starting 13 as representative of where teams are at. After that it quickly spirals into your 28 man ‘everyone is here’ squad. Danny Levi named at 14 figures to be in the mix. Bert Hopoate is challenging for a number two jersey but I doubt he’s ever going to be sitting on the bench alongside Adam Cook and Jed Stuart. After that it’s basically everyone looking for a game. Or at least I hope that’s the case. It’d be a tad unusual to go into a game without a forward on the bench.

The big takeaway is obviously that there is no Owen Pattie. We’d speculated that if he was going to play a part in round one he might get a run here. He’s been held back for now, suggesting (as we hypothesised) that the club doesn’t want to jam him into the first grade squad from the get go. While I think he’s ready, the club evidently doesn’t. But it won’t be long.

The other thing we note is the starting halves are as expected – Ethan Strange at six and Jamal Fogarty at halfback. We’ve been clear that Strange is a six, and that moving him to centre would delay his development and the Raiders’ prosperity. It’s relieving that the club sees that too. Ethan Sanders is on the very long bench, as is Adam Cook, and they’ll probably get some run at the back end of the game. Perhaps even alongside Strange. Sigh. I wouldn’t mind Sanders playing with Strange though, switching the side the six generally lines up. That’d be a useful exercise.

Matty Nicholson has been named on the right edge, which is a good sign but not a definitive one. Injury to Zac Hosking has meant we don’t really have a clear idea of which of these two will start, and who may be relegated to the bench or worse. We know Hosking has versatility, and Stuart has flagged repeatedly that Nicholson can play middle and edge to the point it’s become Chekov’s backrow. Do you want Nicholson’s promise or Hosking’s certainty to start? I suspect it will be the latter, but it’s pleasing that the former is impressing Stick enough to keep him at the front of the line.

We knew Savelio Tamale would be named on the wing and pending a good performance I would expect this to be the case for round one. Michael Asomua and Hopoate will also be pushing for time, but while both performed well in the first trial, neither did enough to put themselves at the front of the queue. By all reports and from the limited viewing we’ve seen Tamale is a brutal and dynamic athlete, but a raw footballer still. It makes sense, he’s only 20. This trial will be his opportunity to prove he’s ready.

The final thing we’d note is that there’s no Joe Tapine. I’ve not heard anything from the club other than Taps wants to be super ready for round one. He’s also skipping the All-Stars match. If he was carrying anything significant I would hope the club would be forthcoming about that. For now though we’ll just assume it’s a ‘rest up, big guy. There’s bigger battles.’ I’d suggest Corey Horsburgh isn’t playing for similar reasons. For these reasons I don’t expect Hudson Young or Josh Papalii to play big minutes on Thursday. Blow out the cobwebs and getting ready to put it all on green on March 1.

Without Taps and Horse it’s hard to know how the middle rotation will play out. Will Horse push Smithies to the bench? Will Mooney or Papa come off the bench? Is Ata Mariota, again named at the tail-end of bench, or Pasami Saulo, in the mix for what seems to be the spare bench role? As we noted the absence of Hosking only adds to these questions. So it’s not the whole story, just most of it.

With the Vegas trip creeping up this team list is reducing the questions we have to ask. We now have a very good idea of what round one will look like. But not everything. The future is predictable but it’s not yet determined.

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