I'm with you for all of this, my concerns also. Capewell is definitely a loss, of course moreso for his off field presence and leadership but right now if we lose Riki or Piakura, we are in a lot of trouble. Even if we don't, is Piakura ready to be consistently good across essentially 30 rounds? I doubt it.
Then, not only do we have whatever fatigue, etc that Vegas will bring, we will lose a lot to origin this year - Carrigan, Walsh, Haas, Cobbo, Staggs (likely) and possibly Mam (most likely 18th man at least). Do we have the depth to cover these guys? Maybe but probably not like last year. This is on top of no Herbie, Flegs, Capewell, Palasia and likely Sailor anymore.
We could be looking at:
1. Arthars
2. Oates
3. Hoeter
4. Mariner
5. Leota
6. Madden
7. Reynolds
8. Willison
9. Walters
10. Baker
11. Piakura
12. Riki
13. Hetherington
14. Mozer/Smoothy
15. Jensen
16. Taupau
17. Te Kura/Hunt