Jersey Flegg match preview: Round 3 Newcastle Knights Fri 23 Mar 2018, 12:44 PM Parramatta Eels v Newcastle Knights Date: Sunday, March 25 Kick-off: 1pm Venue: Ringrose Park Team 1. Matt Cooper, 2. Lachlan Farr, 3. Brayden Musgrove, 4. Mitch Andrews, 5. Justin Worley, 6. Nash Birch, 7. Hayden Loughrey, 8. Pasami Saulo, 9. Tom Starling, 10. Jirah Momoisea, 11. Kurtis Dark, 12. Beau Fermor, 13. Brandon Russell. Interchange. 14. Tevita Alifa, 15. Henry-Siriah Fuimaono, 16. Luke Huth, 17. Will Davies, 18. Matthew Croker, 19. Joe Bromage. The nib Newcastle Knights Jersey Flegg squad are going into Round 3 at the top of the table after back-to-back wins. This week they come up against last year’s grand finalists the Parramatta Eels who have only one win to their name. Coach Todd Lowrie said they get to welcome back handy forward Pasami Saulo this week, who will be getting a start in the number eight jersey. “Pasami is coming back, he’s had a couple of games up with the ISP squad but time for him to come back and play in his own age group for this week anyway,” explained Lowrie. “Hopefully he does a good job of that because he’s one of our better players.” It hasn’t been that long since the Knights last had a match up with the Eels, with the Under 20s side defeating them in a trial last month. Lowrie admits it was only a trial and expects the opponent to be a little bit different this time around. “They brought a pretty big squad down and played a lot of players but this week they’ll obviously be sticking to their strongest team,” commented the Under 20s coach. “They gave us a really good match up in the first half when they had their strongest team, they were on top at half time and then we managed to run away with it in the second half so we’re expecting a really tough game by all reports.” Lowrie predicts Parramatta will be one of the teams to beat this season. “They’re supposed to be one of the better teams in the competition and they were last year’s grand finalists and were probably unlucky not to win,” he said. “They have got a lot of the same guys from last year’s team so they’re expected to be one of the stronger teams. “We’re looking forward to the challenge of coming up against them and playing a bit better than we did last week.” Lowrie maintained that last week’s performance was an indicator they still need a lot of improvement early in their season. “The conditions contributed to our performance last week and whilst we still won, all the guys probably agreed that we were all below where we needed to be,” Lowrie claimed. “We’ll be looking to come out and play better this week and there’s no better challenge than our first away game up against one of the better teams in the competition. “We’ll be focusing on how we complete our sets, get our defence sorted out and how we’re controlling the ruck and I think those three things are paramount this time of the year." https://www.newcastleknights.com.au/news/2018/03/23/jersey-flegg-match-preview-round-3/
TEAM 1. Matt Cooper 2. Lachlan Farr 3. Brayden Musgrove 4. Mitch Andrews 5. Justin Worley 6. Nash Birch 7. Hayden Loughrey 8. Pasami Saulo 9. Tom Starling 10. Jirah Momoisea 11. Kurtis Dark 12. Beau Fermor 13. Brandon Russell 14. Tevita Alifa 15. Henry-Siriah Fuimaono 16. Luke Huth 18. Matthew Croker
Good to see Croker in. He only played about 30 minutes last week, but was all class when he was out there. He is like a young James Graham with his constant playmaking and quality offloads.
12-4 to the Knights after 25 minutes - try to winger Worley. Loughrey's try means he goes to the top of the try scoring list with 4 - 1 ahead of Matt Cooper from the Knights and also 1 ahead of the guy he replaced as Knights halfback, Brendan O'Hagan, who has 3 tries in 3 games for the raiders.
Luke Huth comes on at 37 minutes for middle forward Alifa. Like last week, Tom Starling will have gone to lock on paper - but he actually plays whatever he wants to play. Sometimes he is first receiver in the halves, in defence he is all over the place like usual.
22-14 - 10 minutes to go - but as you often see in the last 10 of under 20s - both sides could score another 2 or 3 tries as young guys run out of steam.
22-14 fulltime. That's a big away win over the team many people had as favourites this year. We are unbeaten on top of the table, and I think that win makes us the team to beat.
fresh Saulo coming on against tired defence - I'm 100 miles away, but I could see that coming very clearly.