Newcastle Knights v Wentworthville Magpies
Date: Saturday March 25
Venue: Lyall Peacock Field, Toronto
Kick-off: 3pm
Squads
NEWCASTLE
1. Nick Meaney, 2. Cory Denniss, 3. Tom Hughes, 4. Jacob Gagan, 5. Kainoa Gudgeon, 6. Will Pearsall, 7. Tyler Randell, 8. Josh King, 9. Tom Starling, 10. Jamayne Taunoa-Brown, 11. Lachlan Fitzgibbon, 12. Joe Wardle, 13. Anthony Tupou. Interchange: 14. Braden Robson, 15. David Bhana, 16. Sam Bernstrom, 17. Pat Mata’utia, 18. Faitotoa Faitotoa, 19. Jake McNamara, 20. Tyrone Amey.
WENTWORTHVILLE
1. Scott Schulte, 20. Bureta Faraimo, 25. Kirisome Auva’a, 4. Nathan Davis, 5. George Jennings, 6. Jamal Fogarty, 7. Troy Dargan, 8. Alex Twal, 9. Cameron King, 10. Peni Terepo, 11. Cody Nelson, 12. Jack Morris, 21. Joseph Ualesi. Interchange: 15. Samuel Gorman, 16. Kelepi Tanginoa, 17. Daniel Howard, 22. James Hasson.
Match Analysis
The Reserve Grade nib Newcastle Knights will be looking for their first win of the season when they host the Wentworthville Magpies for round four at the Lyall Peacock Field this Saturday.
ISP coach Simon Woolford has made a few changes with the exit of Jaelen Feeney to concussion.“Without Jaelen (Feeney), Tyler (Randell) will play in the halves,” said Woolford.
“He is experienced and does a good job there so it will give us an opportunity to fill a hole left by Jaelen, and also give Tom Starling an opportunity at hooker.”
The NYC captain, Tom Starling, gets his first chance with the ISP squad this week.
“Tom has been outstanding in the NYC,” commented Woolford.
“It’s an ideal opportunity to bring him up and give him a chance, he’s handling 20s pretty easily and he’ll get plenty of game time for us on Saturday.”
He’ll join NYC teammate Kainoa Gudgeon, who will again get his start in the reserves on the wing.
“Last week Kainoa Gudegon didn’t get a lot of opportunities with the ball and was made to work really hard in defence,” explained Woolford.
“He deserves another chance and hopefully we can control the ball a bit better this week and he can get some opportunities with the footy.”
The ISP coach is adamant his side needs to respect the footy and control the ball to start to put some wins on the board.
“Round one we made a whole lot more tackles than the opposition, round two we made almost 50 more, round three over 90,” added Woolford.
“When you’re making that many more tackles than your opposition, you’ve giving yourself absolutely no chance of being in the contest.
“At the end of the day it comes down to some individual accountability.
“We’ve talked about that this week and making sure we compete early as far as our ball control and our field position goes and if we do that, we know we’ve got the attack to score some points.”
Where it will be won
“In the first three weeks we’ve been giving other teams too much footy,” Woolford said.
“Penrith have got some handy NRL players waiting in the wings, who are playing well and they’ve got some decent forwards.
“The less tackling we do, the better chance we are giving ourselves, that’s the plan.”
Reserve Grade will be in action against the Wenty Magpies at Lyall Peacock Field, Toronto this Saturday, kick off at 3pm.
