Not only will they be without Country centre Jake Douglas but also his centre partner Garrett Doughty, and Douglas’ replacement last week Andrew Mepham.

It’s a complication they could do without matching up against the unbeaten competition leaders.

Simon Trappel comes in at 12 with George Duddy to start at outside centre.

They’ll be their third midfield combination in as many weeks and, while a lot will hinge on how they combine, particularly defensively, even more will hinge on Pirates’ error rate.

They have to dramatically cut that down.

“If we’ve got any hope at all of beating Moree at Moree we’ve got to be mistake-free,” coach Andrew Verrell said.

“If we make the same amount of errors we’ll get cooked.”

Aside from that, the mantra will be “keep doing what we’re trying to do”.

So far it hasn’t quite come together but, in time, Verrell said hopefully it will pay off.

At the core is the ability to function in pods and groups.

“Nothing has changed from a physical point of view,” Verrell said.

“We  are a very small pack.

“We can’t afford to play isolated football.”

He has a fair idea of what to expect from the Bulls.

“We know what they are like,” he said.

“I can’t see a lot of difference in the squad from last year.”

Moree are, comparatively, a bit in the dark about what to expect with all the new Pirates faces.

“I’m not familiar with a lot of their players,” Bulls co-coach Simon Hall conceded.

That does  have its benefits though.

“It’s nice that you don’t get bogged down in particular players,” he said.

“We can focus on our whole game. 

“It means we can keep building as a team, the way we want to be playing.”

That doesn’t mean they will be taking Pirates lightly.

“We expect a pretty motivated Pirates team to come and put it to us,” Hall said.

“It’ll be one of our biggest tests. 

“Walcha was a big test. It’ll be up there with that.”

He said they haven’t really spoken about anything too specific for Pirates.

“We’ve spoken about getting our defence a bit more robust,” Hall said.

“The last couple of weeks we’ve let players carry the ball a bit further than we needed to.”

Particularly against Tamworth the other week they let Harry Veitch run too much.

They don’t want to be giving the likes of Conrad Starr that kind of licence.

Controlling the breakdown will also be a key but defence will be where it’s won, Hall felt.

“We seem to have an ability to find the tryline,” Hall said.

It’s a matter of what they do up the other end.