{"id":464044,"date":"2026-02-07T08:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/464044\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T08:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:28:09","slug":"nrl-late-mail-pre-season-challenge-vs-knights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/464044\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL Late Mail: Pre-Season Challenge vs. Knights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Head Coach Shane Flanagan has finalised his squad to take on the Newcastle Knights in the highly-anticipated opening round of the NRL\u2019s Pre-Season Challenge.<\/p>\n<p>Late Mail:\u00a0There are no changes to the side named on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>A number of the squad\u2019s rising stars have been given opportunities alongside several senior players.<\/p>\n<p>Ryan Couchman has been named to start in the second row in his first outing in almost 12 months whilst twin brother Toby has been named up front.<\/p>\n<p>Offseason recruits David Fale and Setu Tu earn shots in the backline whilst returning prop Josh Kerr lines up in the No.8 jersey.<\/p>\n<p>Lyhkan King-Togia and Kade Reed \u2013 who were SG Ball teammates just two years ago \u2013 start in the halves with Tyrell Sloan at the back.<\/p>\n<p>A host of up-and-comers have been named on an extended bench including the likes of Tyler Peckham-Harris, Charlie Heidke, Hayden Buchanan and Nick Tsougranis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Head Coach Shane Flanagan has finalised his squad to take on the Newcastle Knights in the highly-anticipated opening&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-464044","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\/464044","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=464044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}