The Brisbane Broncos heading for Saturday’s big rugby league game against the New Zealand Warriors in Napier will be missing the five players from their team who have been chosen for State of Origin rugby league in Australia next week.
The squads were named on Tuesday afternoon, less than 24hours before the Broncos are due to leave Brisbane on a chartered aircraft with about 200 passengers, flying via Auckland and due in Napier at 8.30pm on Wednesday.
Missing from the squad are former Warriors star Reece Walsh, Selwyn Cobbo, Thomas Flegler and Patrick Carrigan, who were all chosen to play for Queensland in State of Origin 1 in Adelaide next Wednesday, and Payne Haas, who was selected for the New South Wales squad.
The Broncos are currently one of six teams on 16 points at the top of the cramped NRL points table, despite a loss to Penrith Panthers on Thursday, and the Warriors, who had a bye at the weekend, are ninth and are expected to field a top 13, with no losses of players to State of Origin football.
The Broncos will visit Eskdale School on Thursday morning and will have a Captain’s Run on Friday afternoon at McLean Park, where the game starts at 7.30pm on Saturday.
The Warriors are expected in Napier about 4.15pm on Thursday. On Monday, they had UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya pop by during a training session in Auckland. On Friday morning, the team will have a session at the park and will be playing on Saturday in their special jerseys produced for the NRL’s indigenous round.
In 2015, the Melbourne Storm in their match against St George Illawarra Dragons in Napier also played in a jersey especially produced for the game.
A sell-out crowd of over 15,000 is expected, with the forecast predicting fine weather and light winds, and temperatures of up to 18C during the day and no lower than 8C at night.
