Charlie Murray while not being overly big, strong or fast, he’s hard working, a good solid defender who makes nearly all of his tackles and generally has no issue getting back to marker or in the defensive line,
In his limited game time against the Cowboys he also demonstrated he can play as a 1st receiver ball playing style of 13 very comfortable and it actually created more time and soace for Luai and our left edge to function effectively.
In addition to this he can play 9 and his service from dummy half looks decent.
I’m not saying he is anything special, but he looks capable of playing roles that are required off the bench and do them effectively.
For someone outside of our top 30 I think he’s doing well, he will get an opportunity to do a full pre season with us in the lead up to 2026 and has scope to improve quite a bit because of it.
You would like to think Heath Mason being named at 14 could spend some time at 9 giving Api a rest and he offers great utility value to cover for plenty of other positions if required.
He is still only 20 years old, he will also not be considered as part of our best 17 for 2026 at the moment, but he’s known as an extremely hard worker who I’m certain will relish the challenge of improving himself to at least put himself in contention for our top 17 and I think he will relish the opportunity to impress in likely playing positions such as 9 that he has not played previously.
Sukkar is still quite young at age 21, he will have benefited from his NRL experience this seaon and while he has not set the world on fire, he has good size and mobility for a young lad and I am seeing stronger ball carries and steady all round improvement from him. Like the other two he probably will not be considered part of our initial top 17 for 2026, but he now has a good taste of NRL, so it’s up to him to have a strong off season and improve enough to at least put himself in contention.
Royce Hunt is Royce Hunt, he will give us a strong 20mins and it’s up our other 2 bench middles to provide more minutes.
I can’t see us beating the Raiders this weekend, but I can’t be blaming our bench, they are not asking to each play very minimal game time.