Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga has revealed who will play in his side’s second Rugby League World Cup group stage game against Scotland.
Meninga gave seven Penrith and Parramatta players a rest in order to recover from the NRL Grand Final but has admitted they will all feature in the next game.
The NRL Immortal will have a few selection headaches on his hand. He'll likely have to drop incumbent hooker Ben Hunt for Harry Grant after a stellar showing against Fiji.
Speaking to SEN, Meninga noted he may use the remaining two group stage games to figure out the team going forward and to allow the halves combination of Cameron Munster and Nathan Cleary to gel.
“Absolutely they’ll (the NRL Grand Finalists) be playing, I think there will be about seven of them that didn’t play on the weekend, they’ll all be playing against Scotland,” Meninga said on SENQ Breakfast.
“I’ll give them an opportunity to work together, obviously Ben Hunt started (at) nine but I’ll probably start Harry Grant this week and James Tedesco who’s the captain will start again.
“We’re trying out our spine, we had the Queensland spine plus Teddy last weekend, but we will try this combination this weekend and see how it goes.”
Meninga was glowing his praise for Harry Grant’s performance off the bench, noting a selection headache going forward.
“It’s a good headache to have I must confess, we’ve got some really good players, 24 of them to be exact and they all want to play at the backend of the World Cup, with that in mind we’ll have a fairly committed Aussie side and we will have to make those tough decisions in a couple weeks’ time,” Meninga said.
“Daley (Cherry-Evans) will get another opportunity, he won’t play this week, but certainly against Italy he will be there.
“If it keeps on going the way it is, Lebanon played really well against the Kiwis, you’d assume that they would come second in that group so we would play Lebanon in the quarter finals.
“I’d imagine by the quarter finals I would have to have most of the team sorted out, but I’m going to give everyone the best opportunity to be involved in the semi-finals.”
The Kangaroos can secure a spot in the knockout stages with a win over Scotland on Friday the 21st of October.