Lampers
Premiership Player
I reckon there’s two things to solve.
How do you save the rotations Langdon doesn’t use?
And which players know how to play the wing role? Because if you can find the Langdon rotation savings elsewhere then you can keep the prime mids fresh and rotate more through the wing.
Lever and May are likely to play 100% game time to save rotations, and Petty is another who last year hit close to 100% several times so could do similar. Gawn can push up to 100% resting forward instead of on the bench. So I’m expecting those four to all be between 90% and 100% time on ground.
Bedford named as a starting player means he’s going to hit much higher game time than last week, so is that as the wing? If they just want someone to stay wide for structure purposes then he’s a good option as he has good endurance. Or maybe he plays the ANB role and ANB pushes onto the wing.
Melksham seemed to be the in-game option against the Kangaroos once Langdon got injured so I think he will spend some time there again.
Of course Brayshaw is the one who knows how to do it the best, but that disrupts the backline. If May, Lever and Petty do really high time on ground then perhaps they can handle Brayshaw missing, but I don’t think they’ll do that.
McDonald has been floated but I can’t see that happening. If Weideman is named as sub that might indicate McDonald is a fall back for wing in case of in-game injury.
In short I have no idea and it will be the most interesting tactical thing for Saturday’s game. I’m going to guess ANB, Bedford and Melksham all rotating through wing and half forward.
Dunstan as the medical sub as losing a running player mid game would be the most disruptive injury. Tomlinson the dark horse as he can play back and used to play wing as the other sub option.
