Hooker Wayde Egan’s 150th career appearance has been put on hold for a week with a hip complaint ruling him out of the One New Zealand Warriors’ final regular season match against Manly Warringah at 4 Pines Park in Sydney on Friday night (6.00pm kick-off local time; 8.00pm NZT).
Coming in to play his sixth NRL match is 23-year-old rookie dummy half Sam Healey, who will start for the third time this season.
In the Warriors’ last two matches, Egan (28) has been replaced by utility Te Maire Martin after 50 minutes against the Titans and 52 minutes against the Eels.
Egan will now play his milestone game in the Warriors’ week one finals game next week.
Head coach Andrew Webster has made only one other change to the listed 17 with prop Tanner Stowers-Smith this week named in the starting lineup after being swapped in later off the interchange in the last two matches.
The 21-year-old clocked 41 minutes in two stints in the 32-18 win over the Titans and 39 minutes in a double shift in last week’s 22-26 defeat by Parramatta.
Webster has named the same backline for the third week since centre Rocco Berry made his return.
The Warriors still have a chance of playing their way back into the top four but that will hinge on the outcome of Thursday’s encounter between the Broncos and the Storm at Suncorp Stadium.
A Brisbane victory would end the Warriors’ hopes but if the Storm win it will be game on when they face the Sea Eagles in a contest the home side will also be desperate to take out.
The Warriors have reached the finals for the second time in three years, the club’s best achievement since making the top eight in 2010-2011 with only a one-off appearance in the finals in 2018 in the intervening years.
Adam Pompey, Marata Niukore, Leka Halasima and Erin Clark are on target to complete the feat of playing in each of the Warriors’ 24 regular season games with Pompey in line to be on the field for all on the field for all 1922 minutes.
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Halasima and Pompey are in a tight race to be the team’s leading try scorer. Tuivasa-Sheck moved to 12 from 17 games with his try last week while Halasima also has 12 following his double with Pompey on 11 after his try (and he would have been on 12, too, but for his second would-be match-winning try being ruled out).
While the Warriors sit sixth on 34 points with 14 wins and nine losses, the Sea Eagles (11 wins, 12 losses) are on 28 points, two behind the eighth-placed Roosters but with a vastly inferior points for and against differential of plus 20 points compared to the Roosters’ plus 102.