LIVEWIRE FLYER SUFFERS SETBACK
ONE of the great individual Intrust Super Cup campaigns was cut short when Brayden McGrady tore his ACL just seven games into the 2018 season.
The fleet-of-foot flyer had put Tweed’s tryscoring load on his back, leading the competition with 12 tries through seven rounds, before he was cruelled by injury.
Almost three years later, after a stint at the Penrith Panthers, McGrady is back in the black and white and ready to flash his prodigious talent once again – or so it was hoped.
The 23-year-old had been named on the wing by Tweed boss Ben Woolf for Saturday’s clash with Souths Logan at Tugun, replacing Ryland Jacobs who had been ruled out indefinitely with a compound fracture of the finger.
However, on Friday Tweed declared McGrady’s troublesome hamstring, which kept him out of the opening two rounds, was not quite ready to go for the Magpies blockbuster.
Instead, Ethan O’Neill will come into the side.
The Seagulls were left scrambling for late inclusions in Round 2 when their Titans players were pulled from the match-day squad just 24 hours before the clash with Wynnum Manly in Brisbane, eventually losing 36-24.
But with their slate of Titans restored to the line-up, it shapes as a mouth-watering match-up against a potent Souths Logan outfit.
Tweed welcomed Darius Farmer, Jayden Campbell, Jai Whitbread, Toby Sexton and Treymain Spry into the side midweek, and were further boosted by the inclusions of Herman Ese’ese and Sam McIntyre on Friday.
It is the Magpies’ right edge which will raise eyebrows on Saturday, with the visitors fielding former household names Kevin Locke and Karmichael Hunt in the two and three respectively.
Former Titan Albert Kelly will captain Souths Logan in a veritable who’s who of NRL stars from the mid-2010s.