Its been an eventful year but we are finally here and there is plenty to look forward to and in my view we are fielding our best 17 (subject to any late injuries)
I am more than comfortable with the squad for the challenge ahead of us.
Broncos have done a great job and deserve to be in the Grand Final and is a fitting result for both teams as both have been the standout sides all season.
That the last of the generosity for the Broncos who are formidable challengers but believe the way to beat them is reasonably simple.
we need to close down Hass and Carrigan. So much begins with these 2 and as demonstrated last week they had the freedom to offload and basically run the Warriors ragged but this only came after the Warriors defence on these 2 dropped off and holes began to open for the like of Walsh and Reynolds.
Hitting Hass and Carrigan hard in defence along with locking the ball up in the tackle is key. Hass is a little like JFH who plays big first half minutes and Carrigan plays the whole game.
Intensity in defence will unsettle the style they like to play which is a sort of controlled mayhem which is all well and good when the other team is tiring or presenting a poor defensive line, i doubt you will see either from us.
I did note Walsh and Broncos were having most of their success down the Tago/ Too side (against warriors) which i expect them to test again and Tago will need to be better then he was against Storm.
But as i said we need to dominate in the forwards in defence and attack which will force Broncos into actions they are not comfortable doing which will also allow our backs and notably Cleary and Luai to weave their magic.
Broncos have been showing good defence but oddly the warriors stripped them for numbers a couple of times with very slick passing also oddly enough similar to a few tries we scored against Storm…almost like Webster was playing our game plan.
Only trouble was he had DWZ racing in for hail mary intercepts and poor defensive reads and there were a few others who just couldn’t go with the Broncos.
We will be a different match up but i hope we don’t get sucked into early rubbish which i also expect them to try.
That being said any challenger we have met this year have tried the usual and at times the most unusual to try and beat us such as the Manly game but any opponent has known they have to do this for 80 minutes without mistakes and that is the challenge for the Broncos in executing their “mayhem” everything has to be perfect.
I doubt they are capable of doing this and if they try to get into a grind with us, we will overcome them easily which sort of places the unusual, their only tactic such as offloads, early kicks etc to try to break us down.
Not sure GF experience helps or even hurts but its nice going in having done this 3 times before.
Like previous games i hope terrible calls don’t influence the outcome, as i want to see a true challenge from both teams.
Expect a Panther victory and don’t care if its by 1 point or by 30.
If we stick to our processes and control the game through our forwards, the result should come our way.
Match
Venue
Time
Tickets
Weather
Partly Cloudy 19°C (
Chance of Rain: 20% / 
Wind: E 19km/h)
Broadcast
NRL Live Pass [LIVE]
Kayo Sports [DELAYED]
ABC Sydney 702AM [LIVE]
Teams and Match Officials have been announced.
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