2026 Selection table: Hooker

Wayde Egan is arguably the Warriors' highest-rated spine player, but who will get the nod to provide dummy-half support in 2026?

The No.9 jersey is one of the most settled in the Warriors’ line-up, with Wayde Egan widely rated – when at his best, at least – as a top-five NRL hooker or higher.

But how coach Andrew Webster utilises freewheeling understudy Sam Healey’s game-breaking talents shapes as one of the more intriguing gameplan storylines of 2026.

Since joining the Warriors from Penrith in 2020, Egan has become the club’s most-capped hooker (105 games, plus 15 appearances from the bench and one at five-eighth) and developed into arguably our best ever to play the position.

Egan was one of the most important cogs of the Warriors’ watershed 2023 campaign and emerged as a candidate for a NSW Origin debut courtesy of some top-shelf performances in early-2024. That season, however, was ultimately most remembered for a spate of early HIA exits and a troublesome elbow injury.

The crafty rake returned to somewhere near his best as the Warriors sat pretty in the top four for half a season, earning seven ‘8’ scores in the Kingz Container Crew Warriors Player Ratings from their first 12 games.

Hip and shoulder problems disrupted Egan’s season from that point (he missed four games) and impacted his form – albeit in a stagnating team – with a singular 7.5 his best subsequent display according to the Kingz Container Crew Warriors Player Ratings.

After opting against a genuine dummy-half option on the bench for the opening six rounds of 2025, Webster brought Te Maire Martin into the fold as a permanent interchange. In only one game after Round 8 did he not carry at least two of Egan, Martin, Healey and Freddy Lussick in his gameday 17.