Stanley River Wolves head coach Rowan Klein said he believed the Wolves needed to bring their A-game to beat the Pirates. We re confident that if play our best we can win, but we re going up there with no illusion - we know Noosa will be extremely hard, he said. The game will be the Wolves first match without co-captains Tom Murphy and Chris Aiton, both staples in Stanley having success in 2019. Although the Wolves lost the dynamic duo, they ve signed major talent this year including Queensland Cup alumnus Rowan Winterfield and Dalton Phillips. Coach Klein said he hoped the recruitment of Winterfield and Phillips would make up for the team losing their prior captains, but knew the season would be harder.
Aiton has departed the club to play in Moranbah and Murphy is set to hit the top end as a captain/coach for a Northern Territory team. However, premiership winner and former Sunshine Coast Falcon, Ryan Hansen, will lace up again for the Woodford side in a shared arrangement with the Moranbah Miners. Hansen will play week on week off in an arrangement that worked well for both clubs in 2019. This year s captain Brett Doherty said his team was keen after a forced year off due to COVID-19. We were raring to go and all of a sudden it stopped, we didn t know what to do with ourselves, he said.