
By Rich Cowley, Date: 26/10/17 (Photo Credit: NRLPhotos)
Venue: Canberra Stadium, ACT, Australia
Kick-off time: 29th October 2017 4pm (Local Time)
This is going to be a cracker of a game. We have two teams who on paper look evenly matched.
French Rugby League teams the Catalan Dragons (Super League) and Toulouse Olympique (Championship) supply most of the players for the French Squad.
Captain Theo Fages who plays for St Helens in the Super League will partner with William Barthhua from Toulouse Olympique in the halves. This should give the French some good attacking options.
The Les Chanteclairs will field one of their strongest teams in recent times. They will need to win this match to make the quarter finals with Australia and England also in their Group.
The Lebanon team will be led by Captain Robbie Farah and Vice-Captain Mitchell Moses. The Cedars will also have NRL veteran Tim Mannah who will take the lead up front.
The rest of the squad is mainly drawn from the NRL, NSWRL and Bankstown rugby league competitions. This will be the 2nd time the Cedars have played in a Rugby League World Cup after running around in the 2000 series.
With NRL legend Brad Fittler coaching the Cedars they won’t be short of a game plan when they tackle the French in Canberra.
France 2017 RLWC Team:
1 Mark KHEIRALLAH
2 Fouad YAHA
3 Bastien ADER
4 Damien CARDACE
5 Ilias BERGAL
6 Theo FAGES (c)
7 William BARTHAU
8 Antoni MARIA
9 Eloi PELISSIER
10 Julian BOUSQUET
11 Benjamin GARCIA
12 Benjamin JULLIEN
13 Jason BAITIERI
14 Clement BOYER
15 Nabil DJALOUT
16 Thibault MARGALET
17 Lucas ALBERT
18 John BOUDEBZA
19 Olivier ARNOUD
20 Mickael ROUCH
21 Romain NAVARRETE
Lebanon 2017 RLWC Team:
1 Anthony LAYOUN
2 Travis ROBSINSON
3 James ELIAS
4 Jason WEHBE
5 Abbas MISKI
6 Mitchell MOSES
7 Robbie FARAH
8 Timothy MANNAH
9 Michael LICHAA
10 Alex TWAL
11 Chris SAAB
12 Ahmad ELLAZ
13 Nick KASSIS
14 Mitchell MAMARY
15 Elias SUKKAR
16 Jaleel SEVE-DERBAS
17 Andrew KAZZI
18 Adam DOUEIHI
19 Bilal MAARBANI
20 Jamie CLARK
21 Danny BARAKAT