NRL great PAUL GALLEN will appear on Nine’s 100% FOOTY every Monday night of the NRL season, debating rugby league’s hottest topics alongside Phil Gould and James Bracey. Tune in tonight at 11:10pm (AEDT) ahead of State of Origin III!
The situation with Cameron Munster and Murray Taulagi missing State of Origin III with COVID-19 will have every NRL club on edge as we head to the finals later this year.
We all know that something like this is going to impact every team at some stage during the season, the key is making sure it doesn’t happen when your entire year is on the line.
I remember writing in this column in March that teams will have to consider self-isolation at some point this season.
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As the clubs head into the semi finals it’s something they’ll have to look at, but it’s going to be harder this time around, because of how much different things are now than in either 2020 or 2021.
A lot of people live with girlfriends, wives or parents. Those that are single often have people coming over to their house, and the players are interacting with people who might be exposed to hundreds of other people per day.
It’s hard to totally control, but the clubs will be very keen to give themselves as much protection as they possibly can heading into the back end of the season.
You take your hat off to the Origin teams, in that they went out into some of the devastated communities that have been hit hard in recent months, but when you stop and think about it, that’s a high-risk environment because of the number of people they meet.
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We don’t know for sure where Cameron Munster and Murray Taulagi caught it, but it will certainly make the NRL clubs more cautious going forward.
Any team that’s serious about winning the competition will definitely have to look at restricting their movements, even a self-imposed bubble, given the amount of cases we have at the moment.
Last year we were in isolation with a few hundred cases a day, now it’s tens of thousands a day.
Every club will look at what’s happened to Queensland and realise it’s the nightmare scenario. What if Penrith loses Nathan Cleary to COVID-19 in grand final week? Or Parramatta loses Mitchell Moses? You can go through all the contenders and pick one or two players whose loss would be a massive blow.
Munster and Taulagi are going to miss a State of Origin decider, apart from a grand final that’s the biggest match on our calendar.
Munster’s absence left Billy Slater with a decision about whether Tom Dearden or Ben Hunt should partner Daly Cherry-Evans in the halves, but I like the option of Dearden as a straight swap for Munster.
We’ve seen how good he’s been for North Queensland this year with a genuine halfback inside him, in Chad Townsend. The best part of Dearden’s game is his running game, and that’s exactly what Queensland needs.
Had they moved Ben Hunt to the halves that would have been too much of a change to their spine for my liking.
Having said that, Munster is obviously a huge loss because it’s so hard to put a defensive structure around him. Half the time even he doesn’t know what’s next, because he plays off-the-cuff so much, and it’s why he’s so dangerous.
There’s no like-for-like replacement, the fact is there’s nobody else in the game who can do what Munster can do, so it’s a case of Queensland having do adapt to him not being there.
Dearden’s been around the camp now for a while, so he’ll be familiar with how they play, they probably won’t change much just because he comes into the side.
New South Wales shouldn’t be focusing too much on Munster not being there or Dearden coming in. The Blues should just be worrying about their own game, they can’t control what Queensland does.
It’s obviously bad for Queensland, but it could have been much worse had this happened on the day of the game. They’ve had plenty of time to get their heads around it and prepare without Munster and Taulagi, obviously the later it happens the more disruptive it would have been.
But regardless of how it plays out on Wednesday night, it’s a big warning to every club in the game.
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