BY DAN

Your main takeaway from today’s team list for Sunday’s qualifying final against the Broncos is that Josh Papalii has been named.

This makes perfect sense. The Raiders were always going to give him every chance to prove his fitness before Sunday. That will have been nine days since his injury, and starting to get close to being a normal return from a regular ankle sprain (assuming that is his actual injury). With Matty Nicholson named at 18^th man, it’s safe to say the Raiders are hedging their bets.

There’s a bit of a vibe around this that it’s a smokescreen. I mentioned that as a possibility when it was first announced, and photos of Papa moon-bootless on the weekend were enough to convince many this was the case. This is further bolstered by the idea that Stick let the middles play decent minutes on Sunday, which seems an unnecessary risk if you’ve got one of your starters on literal ice (no wait, not like that).

Papa was also pulled from media commitments, which means…I dunno. His ankle is too sore to talk to anyone? They’re worried he’d not be able to lie properly? Actually the last one seems plausible. Whether he ends up playing or not, both pathways start and end with naming him today. The club did say he’s in doubt, but I guess you could say that’s just commitment to the bit.

For whatever it’s worth, the Broncos apparently think it’s a smokescreen and their pliant media say Madge is upset, for some reason. They’ve gone for payback in the form of Reece Walsh “hobbling” off the field at training. It’s almost comical. You’d almost think it was childish on behalf of all involved, but then it seems plausible at least that Papa is hurt. If you think Walsh is at all hurt then I have a game I’d like to play with you. It’s called three-card monty and everyone is a winner.

There’s little else of note in these team lists, and it seems we’ve settled on a media circus based around fitness. Expect sickness rumours next, probably about the flu in the Queensland camp, and we’ll have to wait for the plethora of non-mainstream media rugby league organisations like this or this or this to actually give us a clue about the game.

Nothing about the team lists changes that.

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