James Graham won Man of the Match from Channel 9 for his performance on Friday, when he captained Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs in a comprehensive win over Manly Sea Eagles at Brookvale.

Gregory Eden turned in a mixed performance on the wing for Brisbane Broncos as they defeated Parramatta Eels at Pirtek Stadium.

Joshua Hodgson was excellent again in Canberra's close win over Penrith Panthers in Canberra. Debutante Elliot Whitehead was probably troubled by the scorching 35 degree heat as he turned in a modest performance.

Samuel Burgess will make his reappearance for South Sydney on Sunday.

Joseph Burgess will not appear for the Sydney Roosters until mid season at the earliest according to Trent Robinson, as the coach supervises a weight buildup of the former Wigan winger. Expect Joseph to play in the NSW Cup in the meantime.

You mean the Elliott Whitehead who put in stella performances in the South of France during the height of summer struggling in a bit of heat?

Whitehead played the full 80 minutes, not exactly signs that he was struggling with the heat.

I really don't understand why the Roosters signed Burgess. He's nowhere near as good as their own young wingers.

They only have 3, including Burgess (if you count SKD as a centre which he is). Tuopu is better yes but he's 3 years older than Burgess. Latrell Mitchell is the only player ahead of him who is an unproven 18 year old and has only gotten the nod because he was good against a poor Saints side.

I said ages ago that Burgess will become one of the best wingers in the world and I stand by it. I just hope they don't bulk him up too much and he loses his pace because he's one of the fastest I've ever seen especially over the first 30m.

On Sunday March 6, 2016, Joseph Burgess was included in the Sydney Roosters run on side to play South Sydney after one of the originally selected wingers, Daniel Tupou, suffered an injury.

Joseph Burgess scored two tries in his debut for Sydney Roosters, both scored in the second half!'

Earlier in the game, when Joseph made a couple of spectacular catches of South Sydney high kicks, Channel 9 game caller Ray Warren made much of Joseph's genesis in the famous Wigan side and his try scoring feats for Wigan, as well as his inclusion in the 2015 Super League Dream Team. However in the first half, while defending, Joseph was caught out of position a couple of times, and his coming infield led to tries by South SYdney.

Unfortunately Joseph Burgess's team went down 42-10. Josephs two tries were the only two tries that the Sydney Roosters scored. He almost scored a third but was knocked into touch by superstar Gregory Inglis and another Souths player whom I cannot identify. Channel 9 commentator and rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns was very impressed with Joseph, as was commentator Phillip Gould. However in the post-match press conference coach Trent Robinson, when asked about Joseph Burgess, said that Joseph had learned some lessons in the NRL (probably a reference to his defensive positional play), and that like the rest of the team he had to take those lessons and work on them.

At the conclusion of the game Joseph Burgess was seen chatting with South Sydney and England superstar Samuel Burgess. The conversation went on for several minutes.

The Catalans games in the south of France are usually played in the late afternoon or early evening, when the heat has died down. Ellliot Whitehead, in his debut for Canberra was playing in mid afternoon, in a gruelling temperature of 35C!

Raymond Warren, Richardhead.

How did super Trent Robinson's after game interview go

The NRL commentators can't watch any super league games tbh , they didn't know who Joe burges was at all .

The Anglophile Vossy would have known, but Rabbits and co don't seem to know much about the English game at all.

I like how Jean is now using the Football Manager press release engine to write his posts.

Its quite interesting that in commentary they mentioned Trent Robinsons reservations on Burgess, was his tiny frame and because of this his inability to bring that ball out from the 20.

Trent Robinson at the post match press conference on 6 March, 2016, appeared unhappy with Joseph's performance, despite the two tries. Trent must have been thinking of Joseph's occasionally defective positioning in defence, which led to a couple of South Sydney tries.

Joe Burgess will be back in a Wigan shirt and wont be offered a new contract at the Roosters, possibly as soon as next season due to missing his family etc

source?

HP

Not sure how Burgess was to blame individually for any of the Souths tries to be fair.

One high kick landed at his side and his centre got outjumped by a second row in front of him - the only criticism could be that he should have looked to make a tackle/help out rather than get involved in the kick itself. For another the whole defensive line was compressed when Reynolds kicked over his head - had Burgess been on his wing he would have been 20 yards away from the next defender. The try scored by Hunt should have been stopped by the two defenders who hit him first. Burgess could have done better possibly but its hard to blame him failing to stop a player with momentum a yard from the line when the first two defenders fluffed it.

He looked to have oodles of pace and clearly needs to improve running out of defence, but he took the kicks that went his way with ease and looked a potential very high class player to me.

I suspect Trent Robinson was far more concerned with how poor his forwards and halfbacks went, especially Hastings who had an absolute nightmare.

Yeah, I agree with all of that. Burgess's two tries didn't take much scoring, but he did OK, and there were plenty worse in Roosters' shirts.

Considering it was his debut, he did as well as anyone could have expected. He caught the ball well and was severely tested by Reynolds. Also did very well for his second try and showed some pace. Not sure you could put any try down to him. Souths first half performance was the epitome of Michael Maguire. Like a juggernaut. But if Reynolds is out for any length of time that will be a massive problem.

Thought Mike Cooper was pretty solid for the Dragons. Did the hard yards from inside the 20 on a number of occasions plus tackled like a monster for his 50minute stint. Made 30 tackles, the most of the Dragons.

Joshua Hodgson had a great game for Canberra Raiders against the powerful Sydney Roosters. Joshua was moved to half back after Canberra lost their five eighth Lachlan Croker. With the scores locked at 20-20, Joshua kicked a massive 40-20 in the final minutes, which gave his team possession five yards out from the Roosters line. In the ensuing play Samuel Williams (formerly with Catalans) kicked a field goal and so Canberra won 21-20.

The plucky Englishman Joshua Hodgson has flourished under the coaching of Richard Stuart, and is regarded as one of the best buys Canberra has made in recent years. He certainly deserves to be the England hooker.

Richard Stuart

[iWatched the Souths game this morning, Sam had another barnstorming game with some sweet offloads. George had is first game for a while and came through it well making some valuable gains. I think one of the stats read Sam Burgess made 127 metres just in the first half. Utterly amazing.[/i

I hate loosing all these players to the nrl. I wish all of them were back in SL so we could watch them every week. Hope we ca n get Sam back 30+