Lee and Congoo right at home in the Toyota CupThree of the six tries in the Canberra Raiders Toyota Cup side’s tremendous 32-28 victory over last year’s premiers the New Zealand Warriors remarkably came from the same household.
House mates Edrick Lee and Malcom Congoo are best of mates off the field and it seems their relationship is not limited to helping each other off the field, but on it as well.
Strike centre Lee scored one and set up another two for his mate Congoo on Sunday, with all three coming at vital times in the tightly fought contest.
Coach Andrew Dunemann will be hoping the left centre/wing pairing can produce the same kind of magic on Friday night coming against the enigmatic Brisbane Broncos.
“I think that combination has been building for a while and they obviously know each other well as they live with each other,” said Dunemann.
“Malcom’s got a lot of pace and Eddie can do a lot for his outside support players. You’d like to be playing inside or outside Eddie, he’s a very good player and he’s improving every time he goes out and plays.”
“Obviously Mal didn’t get his chance early on in the year but he’s got his chance now and he’s taken it with both hands. He’s learnt what’s needed to play at a decent level such as this.”
“They were both really impressive on the weekend and hopefully they can continue their great form against the Broncos.”
Dunemann was not only impressed with the flamboyant duo on the left edge but rather the whole team’s performance in the come from behind victory against the highly favored Warriors.
“It was a good effort last week to beat the Warriors after being down on the scoreboard. It has given us a lot of confidence moving forward particularly after what the side went through last year. They lost a bit of confidence last year with their disappointing finish to the year but after being able to come back from that deficit it should do them a world of good.”
“I don’t think it was our most complete performance of the year but I think the biggest thing that came out of that game was that we showed a lot of character. We’ve still got a lot of work to do but I was really proud of the way we performed under adversity and came back and got the result on the weekend.”
Whilst Brisbane has had a somewhat inconsistent start to the year, Dunemann is still wary of the threat they pose to the Green Machine, particularly after they disposed of the West Tigers last week 46-30 – the side that gave the Raiders a 40-10 touch up in round 4.
“I thought they were really good last week. They’ve improved dramatically since the start of the year and they seem to have a really good team. Going up to Brisbane on a Friday night is always going to be a tough game so we definitely need to fight and battle very hard for those two points.”
“By the end of our game there should be around large crowd building up for the start of the NRL match so it’s going to be one of the biggest crowds they’ll play in front of this year. As we know they’re pretty vocal up there and great supporters of rugby league. It’s a great occasion for our boy s and we just need to go out there and do ourselves justice like we did on the weekend.”
The match kicks off at 5:15pm on Friday at Suncorp Stadium.
Source: Raiders
Topic: Lee and Congoo right at home in the Toyota Cup
