This Sunday the Hostplus Cup heats up early.
The preliminary final rematch is on show, and you can’t get it much earlier than round one.
Head to head it’s the Dolphins with 33 wins to the Bears’ 27 with one draw thrown in there.
The last time they met the Bears came away with a grand final spot and ultimately a premiership.
These two Hostplus Cup powerhouses drip and ooze history, class and toughness. In the last 10 grand finals, only two haven’t involved a Dolphin or a Bear.
Round 1 can be a strange excursion sometimes, you don’t know them and they don’t know you, no data to read or games to watch. It’s the ultimate blind date.
But these two know each other very well.
The Dolphins have done a massive renovation, and the house was already looking pretty good, but the Dolphins don’t accept looking good.
Riley Price has come back to South East Queensland. The Caloundra State High graduate is no stranger to the Peninsula having played for the Falcons Mal Meninga and Colts before going to North Queensland and Penrith.
Price will add valuable experience and effort to everything the Dolphins do in 2026.
The Dolphins 2026 hooker rotation may keep some coaches awake at night and sweating profusely as they lay in bed pondering the upcoming weekend.
The Jordan Plath and Brent Woolf dummy half rotation brings two hookers at different ends of their career. Woolf has played 102 games and Plath has played six.
Plath has showed an ability to play long tough minutes with five of those six games being 80-minute efforts and 193 tackles in those five games.
Woolf is all the craft and guile of a player that’s played Hostplus Cup for over a decade.
The Bears have a lot of new cubs too, but it won’t be long until they are indoctrinated with the way of the bear.
The Bears have never won back-to-back premierships for all their success they haven’t been able to add that sweet double win to their name.
The pathway to that goal starts this week.
The Bears have added Kane Bradley with 13 NRL games and 64 Hostplus Cup games and will have the use of Delouise Hoeter.
Hoeter makes the players around him better and a young Bear winger is about to get a education on staying outside Del and scoring tries.
Along with Luke Gale and their forward leader Sam Coster, the Bears will be the same old Bears in 2026.
Tough uncompromising forwards and massive backs that finish tries like Troy Leo.
Then you add in young Broncos like Jett Bryce, Tupou Francis and Bailey McConnell.
Will the new Dolphins and Bears write their first chapter in this epic Hostplus Cup title fight?
Find out this Sunday with this week’s feature match, presented by National Storage, broadcasted live and free across Qplus.tv, Kayo and 9now.
