ST GEORGE Illawarra coach Anthony Griffin admits the the next month of selection meetings shape as a join-the-dots exercise as he contemplates an unprecedented coaching challenge.
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Injury and suspension has prevented Griffin from putting his best side on the park for most of the season, but there's no blueprint for dealing with 12 one-game suspensions dealt out following his players' infamous Shellharbour house party.
Matt Dufty and Tyrell Fuimaono will be the first of the 'dirty dozen' to sit out Friday's clash with Manly, while Daniel Alvaro and Zac Lomax remain in quarantine after refusing to sign a sworn statement that was a condition of returning to the club bubble.
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It sees Tyrell Sloan return at fullback after debuting a month ago, with matters complicated further by a league-wide shift to Queensland amid the Sydney COVID outbreak.
"At this stage, we're just working from game to game and if we can average three or four [per game] over the period we'll knock them all over," Griffin said.
"We've just started with this game and we've picked a team that we're confident will still give us a chance to win the game. This week, we've got a chance to give Sloan a go and rest one of our spine [Dufty].
"Corey Norman's got to have a rest at some stage so we don't want to rest both of those guys at once. We're just trying to balance it out the best way possible."
While coaching staff have nutted out a host of contingencies, Griffin said he can't afford to look too far past Friday night.
"As a coaching group and as a club we've sat down and pooled our ideas and written teams out and taken everyone's opinion," Griffin said.
"That's about as far as we've gone with it, we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, we want to stay in the moment. If we get one or two injuries [Friday] night things can change again depending on the position.
"We work with the NRL every week on our list, we have to submit it to their football department for approval. Next week, depending on injuries and how the team's going, we might do two, we can do up to six under the NRL guidelines.
"There's been a lot of change over the last couple of weeks with the Shellharbour [party] happening, but also having to move into a hub now. We'll play tomorrow night and then re-assess it."
Lomax and Alvaro will still have a suspension to sit despite missing Friday's match, with a mandatory two-week quarantine leaving them ineligible for selection and thus unable to serve a suspension.
"We're still waiting on the NRL for them," Griffin said.
"They finish their two weeks quarantine on Saturday so the next move will be when they're allowed to come up and quarantine and what that looks like.
"Our management are working with the NRL on that and that's something they'll address over the next couple of days I'd imagine."
The drama is enough for most observers to put a line through the club's finals chances, but Griffin says his cue is certainly not in the rack.
"We've been inconsistent but we've got ourselves into a reasonable position on the ladder," he said.
"The next three or four weeks we've got some challenges in not being able to put our best side out every week but we're confident in the depth and the quality of people we've got in the club that we'll be able to maintain our spot there over the next month.
"What's done is done. We weren't proud of what happened as a club and neither were they as individuals. The important thing now is we move on."