Preseason

The 22-player squad, which was announced to players at their training session earlier this morning, will travel to Marley Brown Oval in Gladstone to take on the Central Queensland Capras on Saturday night.

This will be the first appearance of a Dolphins NRL team ahead of their official competition debut next month against Sydney Roosters at Suncorp Stadium.

After an impressive start to their campaign in season 2022, notching up four consecutive matches on the trot, the Gulf franchise unfortunately could not maintain that winning streak, finishing off the season outside the top six.

Coach Laka though was quite impressed with the outcome saying, it’s a work in progress.

Since appointed head coach last year, his main focus was to blood in a lot of young boys from their development pathway around seasoned players, and help rebuild a new culture for the club.

Gun centre Joe Frank “the tank” 2022 five-eighth of the Year Saki Peter and rising prop forward Koso Badi have made the final 30-man squad after impressing Hunters Head Coach, Stanley Tepend at preseason training since  camp started in November.

The Hunters team will be further trimmed down to 25 before the season kicks off in March.

From the Gurias trio, Frank in particular who had a solid season with Gurias in 2022 has worked really hard to earn his spot.

The team have retained most of its players with others joining mostly players who have been in the Gulf Isou Development program for the last two years.

The program has yielding results and Head Coach, Roger Laka is not wasting time giving opportunities for the young budding players to showcase their talents this season. 

Few names from the development program who have tasted Digicel Cup season in 2022 are Kenny Laho, Charlie Horope, Samuel Kiap, Olo Ben and Graham Sinori.