I expect early on teams will test out our known weaknesses, namely our edges and our marker defence.
If anyone knows how to pick a team apart it's Wayne Bennett and you can expect Bird, Oates, and Roberts to test us out wide from the start and Nikorima, Milford and McCullough to keep our markers and middle on their toes. We have to take full advantage of our stronger pack and play up the middle, use the power game early on before we let Wids and Hunt start heading out wide. Our kicking game will be better than last year - long and short - and we'll need to keep the Broncs down their own end to have a chance in this one.
When Bennett coached us we were very effective at continually running big bodies at the opposition playmakers with B.Scott, Creagh, Costigan etc wearing down the little blokes, sapping their energy. We need to do that against Nikorima and Milford while making sure we shut down both of them and McC if they dart from dummy half.
I'm expecting a very open game, lots of points and hard to pick a winner. Either way I think we'll learn a lot about our team from this - it's probably a good first up test for the boys and coach, a hard game against a top side.
Dragons to ignore our bad record against the Broncs and our worse Thurs night record to win by 8.