St George Illawarra will rely on their unmatched familiarity to help combat their toughest turnaround of the season ahead of the Anzac Day clash with the Sydney Roosters.
The timing of Anzac Day on a Wednesday this year has proven a nightmare for both the Dragons and Roosters, who are facing unavoidable short turnarounds into the traditional Allianz Stadium fixture.
While the Roosters played last Thursday night in Sydney, the Dragons played a Friday night game across the Tasman in Auckland.
But the first-placed Paul McGregor’s Dragons have an ace up their sleeve.
They remain the only club not to have changed their starting 13 throughout the opening seven rounds, and have used just 18 players in total this season.
“It’s of huge importance,” McGregor said, as he recalled he hadn’t seen anything like it during his time in the game.
“And that’s the beauty of not doing too much this week and giving the boys a bit of extra time off because our roster hasn’t changed.
“We’ve got to tweak a few things in our attack that we can do better that we didn’t do last week as well.
“But having the same people week after week and the repetition we’ve done prior to this week is really important.”
In turn, McGregor has been able to keep his players fresh headed into the emotion-charged clash.
Dragons players had the weekend off after arriving home on Saturday, and only had a light gym recovery and gym session on Monday ahead of a short captain’s run on Tuesday.
McGregor’s middle forwards also played slightly fewer minutes in their loss to the Warriors on Friday night, leaving them primed for the clash with the at-times inconsistent Roosters pack.
It’s with good reason McGregor has taken this approach too.
April and May have notoriously not been kind to the Dragons in recent years.
They shot out of the blocks in both 2015 and 2017 to lead the ladder, but fell apart after Anzac Day to exit in the first week of the finals in 2015 and then not make them at all last season.
But this outfit shapes as a completely different side.
Ben Hunt has filled their gaping hole in the No.7 jersey, while they look far more experienced than the team that lost to the Roosters in the corresponding fixture last year.
“We’ve got different personnel,” McGregor said.
“Our guys a lot more experienced individually too. Our forwards are all around that 26-27 (years old), which is a really nice age of seasoned players.
“We’ve got Euan (Aitken) now in his third or fourth year, (Matt) Dufty gives us a point of difference at the back, Cam McInnes is now an 80-minute hooker where he wasn’t this time last year.
“It’s not just one thing. But we’re in a better situation than we ever have been as my three years as coach.”
