Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga is poised to hand four players their Kangaroos debut when Australia meet France in their next Rugby League World Cup group match.
Cameron Munster, Felise Kaufusi, Tom Trbojevic and Reagan Campbell-Gillard are all in line to play their first Test after Australia opened their campaign with a 14-point win over England.
Ben Hunt, Josh Mansour and James Maloney are the remaining members of the 24-man squad who weren’t selected to play against the old enemy.
However Hunt is a certain scratching as he attends his wedding, while Mansour could also be unavailable pending the birth of his first child.
“I think the seven (players) will play next week. I’ll talk to Cameron (Smith) about what he wants to do. We’ll see what happens in the course of 5-6 days,” Meninga said.
“(Smith will) play. Benny Hunt’s getting married. We’ve only got one hooker.”
Meninga is also expected to be without lock Jake Trbojevic after the Manly star went to hospital with a possible torn pectoral muscle suffered late in the win over England.
Scans on Saturday could also confirm Trbojevic could miss the start of the 2018 NRL season.
“I tore my pec at the start of the 2016 season and any injury’s pretty bad, but any injury that you need to have surgery on definitely tests you mentally,” teammate Boyd Cordner said.
“But with a bloke like Jakey, he’s shown he’s a pretty strong kid. We don’t know how bad it is yet. Fingers crossed it’s just a strain. If not, if anyone could handle it, it’d be him.”
While Australia’s new-look spine struggled to convert their dominance in territory into points against England, Meninga was delighted with their willingness in defence.
England had numerous opportunities to level the game in the second half but were continuously turned away by a scrambling Kangaroos line.
“We were under the pump. It was 10-4, England had a lot of field position against us, but we just kept on coming with really good decisions,” Meninga said.
“We kept on turning up for each other, our scramble defence was really good, which tells me we’re here to play footy and we want to win the competition.”
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All the team list information for Round 8.
