NRL confirms fixture for weeks two and three of 2021 finals series

With week one of the play-offs done and dusted, the NRL has confirmed its fixture for the semi and preliminary finals.

Jasper Bruce

2 min read

September 12, 2021 - 7:26PM

NCA NewsWire

The Sea Eagles and the Roosters will meet in the first semi-final. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

The NRL has confirmed its fixture for the second and third weeks of the 2021 finals series.

On the Friday night of semi-final weekend, the Roosters will meet the Sea Eagles before the Panthers clash with the Eels the following evening.

The matches will be the first finals in premiership history to be contested in Mackay.

The sugar cane capital of Australia’s BB Print Stadium has already hosted three regular season games this year as part of the NRL’s relocation to Queensland.

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Having come into their qualifying final the red-hot favourites, the Panthers will be fighting to keep their premiership dream alive next Saturday. Penrith went down to a polished South Sydney outfit on Saturday night in what was just the side’s fourth defeat of 2021. The loss was the first for influential playmaker Nathan Cleary since the 2020 Grand Final.

After holding the Knights off on Sunday afternoon, the Eels have advanced to meet their local rivals some 19 hours’ drive from Sydney’s West.

The winner will book a preliminary final date with the Storm.

The Panthers came into Saturday’s game having won all of their previous five clashes with South Sydney. (Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

In the other semi-final, the Sea Eagles, thrashed by Melbourne on Friday, come up against a Roosters side that snuck home against the Titans. The victor advances to meet South Sydney in a grand final qualifier.

For this weekend’s game, the Roosters will have to contend without suspended hooker Sam Verrills, who is likely to be replaced by rookie Ben Marschke.

The first week of the finals brought the season to an end for the seventh-placed Knights and eighth-placed Titans. For all the talk that the NRL’s top six had been a cut above the rest of the competition this year, both sides went toe-to-toe with their highly favoured opponents.

The Titans, in particular, came agonisingly close to pulling off a classic upset, and could’ve become just the second eighth-placed team to defeat their fifth-placed rivals since the current finals system was introduced.

Instead, centre Patrick Herbert inexplicably chose not to pass to an unmarked Corey Thompson in the dying seconds of Saturday’s game and was tackled just short of the line, ending the Titans’ hopes of scoring, and indeed, their season.

For the Knights, it was the second consecutive campaign to have ended with an elimination final loss. A divisive penalty try to rookie Will Penisini was the hammer blow for the Novocastrians, who will hope to go deeper into the play-offs next year.