{"id":518377,"date":"2026-03-04T15:36:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T15:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/518377\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T15:36:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T15:36:38","slug":"match-preview-nrl-round-1-vs-raiders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/518377\/","title":{"rendered":"Match Preview: NRL Round 1 vs Raiders"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wait is over.<\/p>\n

After 184 days the Sea Eagles return to 4 Pines Park for Round 1 of the 2026 Telstra NRL Premiership against the Canberra Raiders.<\/p>\n

A narrow win over the New Zealand Warriors sealed a three-game winning run to close out the 2025 season. Now, a new campaign begins on familiar turf.<\/p>\n

Neither club was overly active in the player market in the off-season but will obviously field a new-look halves combination given Jamal Fogarty\u2019s move to the Northern Beaches.<\/p>\n


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Jamal and Luke Brooks will wear the seven and six jerseys respectively in Round 1 for Manly while boom youngster Joey Walsh has been rewarded with the No.14 jersey after impressing in both trials.<\/p>\n

Like Fogarty, Manly\u2019s other key off-season recruit, Kobe Hetherington, will also be making his Sea Eagles\u2019 debut.<\/p>\n

For the Raiders, Ethan Strange and Ethan Sanders will guide their team around the park as the starting halves, although neither player featured in either of the Raiders\u2019 trials (Storm and Sharks).<\/p>\n


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Strange scored a hat-trick in the Raiders\u2019 Round 23 victory over Manly last season in Canberra and will need to be contained. For Sanders, who is hoping to be Fogarty\u2019s long-term replacement, this will be just his fifth NRL game.<\/p>\n

The last time these two sides met at 4 Pines Park, it was one to remember. Manly powered to a 40-12 victory, with Reuben Garrick crossing for four tries in a stunning 28-point personal haul.<\/p>\n


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Round 1. Home ground. A fresh start.<\/p>\n

See you at 4 Pines Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wait is over. After 184 days the Sea Eagles return to 4 Pines Park for Round 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-518377","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\/518377","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=518377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}