NRL Supercoach Final Word | Round 21 trades and skippers

It’s all coming up Milky Jenkins in round 21. Hot off the press, Edwards is out, and Jenkins will start as fullback tonight against Parramatta.

We have absolutely no clue what sort of score he will produce, but based on the eye test of him in open space, I think he will excel. I’m tempted to put the VC on him over Cleary just to see what happens.

As for those of you in the top ranks, I think it might be a little too risky to take it off Cleary after his 38 points last week, in that you could expect a massive bounceback game with fairly high probability.

Turbo Irvo is ranked around 4600th after an ok week minus the C on turbo…I already have Drinkwater and Ponga as fullbacks so thankfully don’t need to make a decision between those two, because they are both seriously hot property for the run home.

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My decision is between the goat of fullback SuperCoach James Tedesco, who is coming back from a nice rest, and Reece Walsh, who is trying to re-ignite the Broncos season after a ton against Penrith last week. Tough decision indeed.

I think based on what we saw from Reece late in 2025 it has to be him. If he can go on that sort of run again and knock out 4-5 tons on the run home, then he should outscore Tedesco and possibly every other fullback in the game.

Obviously the trade can go horribly wrong if the Broncos get completely knocked out of finals contention and start playing in Bali mode, so Tedesco is undoubtedly the safer option of the two.

But there’s no room for safety at this stage of the game, especially if you aren’t cemented in the top few hundred ranks.

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Keano Kini is another guy I would seriously suggest taking a swing at; his numbers are genuinely elite without many attacking stats padding them. We’ve already seen Kini knock out 157 and 140 this year; both scores incredibly came without a try.

Titans also play 5 of their last 6 games at CBUS and have the Dragons this week as one of their final two away games.

Hudson Young going down is a huge blow for owners; however, there is an absolute feast of good 2RF going around right now. Hamish Stewart is actually the guy I would look to grab if I already owned big Haumole, who we’ve discussed at length as the number one option.

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Stewart is knocking out some serious numbers of late and is going to hold genuine keeper status for most of his career by the looks of things. Since moving to the 80min edge role, he hasn’t scored under 63, with multiple 80+ scores and a ton last week thanks to a meat pie.

As I said last week, sit vs start is going to decide how your week goes more so than your captains from here on out. Good matchups and room for big upside is hugely important, but so is the safety of an 80 point score.

I made the mistake last week of sitting Toby and Ryan Couchman for the first time all season, and they knocked out 97 and 81 respectively. I’m definitely not going to make that mistake again, unless it was the last throw of the dice in a H2H cash comp, for example.

Captaincy choice this week will still, of course, play a major role in determining the colour of your arrows come Monday.

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Penrith vs Parra tonight is always a strange fixture, let alone on a Thursday night, so I’m definitely wary of it.

That being said, I’m going to throw the dice and VC Thomas Jenkins at fullback and let the man deliver as much milk as possible with that extra time and space he gets.

Cleary would be my recommendation to those who are extremely highly ranked.

Basically all the fullbacks this week are a decent shout, though none have a clear outstanding matchup besides maybe Reece vs Drinkwater up in Townsville.

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If Drinkwater has the kicking duties, I have half a mind to slap it on him, though I think the Broncos will be well up for this game and might be too much to handle for the Cows.

Hynes against Turbo-less Manly on Sunday afternoon is a great safety net for those unwilling to take any chances; there’s simply no naysayers left when you have a 97.1 average for the season.

Captains

VC: Thomas Jenkins
C: Reece Walsh

Trades

Tom Trbojevic > Reece Walsh