NRL Pre-Season Challenge 2026, Full Fixture List<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThey\u2019ve just brought a level of energy and enthusiasm that\u2019s been infectious to the rest of the group,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
\u2018We\u2019ve still got some tremendous players\u2019 warns Frank Ponissi<\/p>\n
Ponissi, who signed a five-year extension at the end of the 2024 keeping him at the Storm until at least 2029, acknowledged the off-season departures of key players including Ryan Papenhuyzen, Nelson Asofa-Solomona, Jonah Pezet, Grant Anderson and Eliesa Katoa leaves a big hole in the club\u2019s depth\u2014but reminded fans its a situation the Storm has successfully navigated before.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone talks about the players we\u2019ve lost, but we\u2019ve still got some tremendous players here, and we\u2019ve got some exciting young players coming through,\u201d Ponissi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst probably our depth is not going to be as strong as it has been the last two years\u2026 when we\u2019re all fit, in terms of our best 17, is going to be still pretty strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given the off-season changes Ponissi said it was inventible the 2026 season will see an evolution in the Storm squad, but he quickly added that would be no excuse for a drop in the club\u2019s standards or expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike all the other 16 clubs we want to be there that first Sunday in October,\u201d he declared.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we know there\u2019s an enormous amount of work to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can manage our players well and if we get some good luck with injuries… we still think we\u2019re going to have quite a strong team that\u2019s going to be more than competitive this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Storm begins its 2026 NRL campaign at AAMI Park against the Eels on Thursday, 5 March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You can\u2019t simply \u2018wash away\u2019 the pain of consecutive NRL grand final defeats, nor the impact of losing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-444922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}