{"id":53792,"date":"2021-04-04T12:44:10","date_gmt":"2021-04-04T12:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=53792"},"modified":"2021-04-04T12:59:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T12:59:57","slug":"obriens-shock-admission-amid-injury-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=53792","title":{"rendered":"O'Brien's shock admission amid injury crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newcastle Knights coach Adam O'Brien says he will struggle to name a 21-man squad on Tuesday following a mounting injury list, which only got worse during his side's 22-13 loss to the Dragons.<\/a><\/p>\n

Heading into today's clash, the Knights were already without a number of regular first-graders, including star fullback Kalyn Ponga (shoulder), wrecking-ball centre Bradman Best (elbow), back-rower Lachlan Fitzgibbon (shoulder) and winger Edrick Lee (foot).<\/p>\n

Making matters worse for the Newcastle coach, star halfback Mitchell Pearce could be set for an extended period on the sidelines after suffering a pectoral injury<\/a>, while Tex Hoy (hamstring) and Kurt Mann (concussion) also went down. The club also lost young gun centre Dominic Young earlier, who was playing reserve grade.<\/p>\n

Asked how he plans to have a squad ready for Tuesday's weekly 21-man team announcement, O'Brien conceded it would be a "big hurdle" as his club now prepares for a clash with the Titans on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"Newcastle<\/p>\n

"I don't think I'll be able to name 21," he told reporters after the match.<\/p>\n

"We lost young Dom in reserve grade today. Naming the team will be a big hurdle this week."<\/p>\n

To help teams battling with injuries on game day, the NRL earlier in the week revealed that an 18th player would be added to game-day squads from round five<\/a> after the ARL Commission approved a change in playing conditions.<\/p>\n

The 18th man will be used as a concussion substitute but will only be allowed to be called upon if three of his teammates fail a head injury assessment.<\/p>\n

When asked about the introduction of the 18th man, O'Brien challenged the NRL to start "listening" and "talking" to the players more.<\/p>\n

"I was unsure around the HIAs… I'm on the other side of it tonight," he said.<\/p>\n

\"Pearce<\/p>\n

"I probably wasn't thinking that way earlier, and you can't judge everything on the one incident.<\/p>\n

"The one thing I know (is) we need to start listening to our players, we need to start talking to them.<\/p>\n

"They are the ones going through it out there, so that's all I would say. I do it a lot, asking them how they're feeling out there and what the game is like.<\/p>\n

"Whether that's the 18th man or not… I don't know.<\/p>\n

"(The rule) probably seems rushed at the moment… I can't get my head around it at the moment.<\/p>\n

"I'm going to base everything based on what's just happened to our team, so I don't want to make outlandish comments and I haven't given it a lot of thought."<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newcastle Knights coach Adam O'Brien says he will struggle to name a 21-man squad on Tuesday following a mounting injury list, which only got worse […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53792"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53794,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53792\/revisions\/53794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}