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Round 16 of the NRL season continues tonight with a battle of the heavyweights, as the Sydney Roosters take on the Melbourne Storm at the Adelaide Oval. Join The Roar for live scores and a blog of the match, starting from 7:55pm AEST.
The winner of this clash could well in the top four by the end of this round, so there is plenty to play for this Friday night.
In recent rounds, we got the sense that the Roosters were finding their way and they then confirmed this with a 32-6 victory over the front-running Panthers.
It doesn’t get any easier for the Roosters this weekend, with Cooper Cronk playing his old club for the first time.
The representative round is likely to result in some late changes for both teams. As is stands though, the Roosters lose Boyd Cordner who is recovering from the concussion sustained late in State of Origin game 2.
Nat Butcher will come into the second row, with Mitch Aubusson replacing the injured Joey Manu. Waerea-Hargreaves has been named in the extended squad but is unlikely to take his place in the 17 after finally arriving back from Denver.
It seems unusual for last year’s premiership winner to be flying under the radar but that is exactly what the Melbourne Storm have been doing.
Now that State of Origin is almost over for another year, you’d expect the Storm to start stringing the wins together and I think that may start tonight.
Billy Slater has been named to start at fullback but will be in some doubt due to his dodgy hamstring. Jahrome Hughes has been named on the bench but will take Slater’s role at fullback if he is a late withdrawal.
Ryan Hoffman will start in the backrow. All the Storm’s other representative players are expected to start.
Prediction
The Storm have won 4 of the 5 last clashes, with the Roosters only win a 1 point nail-biter in a State of Origin impacted round last year.
It’s a toss of the coin, but I think the loss of Cordner and Waerea-Hargreaves will be too much for the Roosters to overcome.
Storm by 6
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