Its ridiculous how this game can go ahead. I dont think we will even be able to name 17 players for this game.

We have Jake Wardle and Jermaine McGilvarry in the England squad with Kenny Edwards, Ricky Leutele and Aidan Sezer in the nations squad.

We have Jack Ashworth, Sam Wood, Chris McQueen, James Cunningham, Darnell McIntosh, Matty English, Oliver Russell and James Gavet out with the Covid protocols.

We then lost Joe Wardle to injury last night along with what I believe were failed HIAs for Adam O Brien and Jack Cogger who will have to miss out.

Jon Luke Kirby and Chester Butler are both out for the season who are in the first team squad while Innes Senior is on a season long loan at Wakefield.

As it stands our squad will be:

Olly Ashall-Bott
Louis Senior
????
Leroy Cudjoe
???
Lee Gaskell
???
Luke Yates
Ashton Golding
Oliver Wilson
Josh Jones
Sam Hewitt
Michael Lawrence

Ronan Michael
Owen Trout
???
???

A couple of the Covid lads might come back in. We are going to hope Jake Wardle etc dont get selected and can play. Other than that we will have to play our academy lads if it goes ahead.

The whole thing is ridiculous.

Yes as it stands we'll be missing Connor, Satae and Sao to the England game. Our injury list currently features Griffin, Tuimavave, Taylor, Cator, Bowden, Scott, Matongo, Shaul plus Harvey Barron who hasn't played for the first team but has a squad number.

Potentially just sixteen players available including Jude Ferrerira who has yet to make his first team debut and Miteli Vulikijapani who made his debut today.

I wouldn't' be worried if I was you. It will still be an easy 2 points for you!

Surely the integrity of the competition is compromised by this game taking place. Some teams are cancelling games due to covid and we’re taking remaining players out those squads.
What will we learn from it anyway?
Two sets of players who play each other all the time anyway.

Would much rather see an origin type setup. But then two 17s of England eligible players would end up fairly average. All for a chance to get beat by Australia in a final no one outside the sport watches.

Is it just my Black and White glasses or is it weird that Savelio never gets mentioned as a potential international? As an FC fan I prefer him not risking injury but I also really rate him and think him being overlooked is unjust.

He qualifies for England, NZ and Samoa but I don't know what his preference would be. Has he ever talked about it?

At least we are going to be in the same boat. We can just about put together a decent backline and halves but are really going to be struggling for forwards. Satae, Sao, Taylor, Bowden, Matongo and Cator all unavailable. There will be a couple of debuts for academy lads without a doubt.

Awful planning.

Absolutely ridiculous that they are playing an International friendly at the same time as League matches. As others have said, it completely undermines the integrity of our game.

At the start of the season they should have scheduled this game on its own weekend and given all the clubs a week off.

They knew it was a shorter season, so could have scrapped the extra loop fixtures and just had a 23 match regular season including Magic.

Alternatively, they should have just not scheduled this fixture.

Sao and Satae are in I've heard.

Agree. At the very least he should be considered. Quality player. Another good Radford signing.