Elliott Whitehead and Joe Tapine are not on speaking terms. Not this week at least, which could make for an icy trip to Denver with the Canberra Raiders duo on the same flight.
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Sure, that's tongue-in-cheek, but Whitehead laughs he couldn't think of anything worse than coming back to Canberra to hear his Raiders teammate boasting about getting the better of the Englishman.
Whitehead's England teammates are already in Denver which has left the Raiders forward to fly to the United States with Tapine and the rest of the New Zealand squad, before they square off at Mile High Stadium on Sunday morning (AEST).
Whitehead remains unsure if he will line up on his preferred right edge to line up directly against Tapine given Wayne Bennett has the likes of Sam Burgess and John Bateman to squeeze into his pack.
He might have plenty of time to think about it on his first trip to the United States with Tapine joking "we don’t speak to each other until after the game".
"I’m flying with the Kiwi boys but I’m probably not sitting with them. I’ll be sat on my own for a good 18 hours," Whitehead said.
"If I am [directly opposing Tapine], Joe is a class player so I’m going to have to have a good game against him. I don’t want him to get one over on me and come back the week after and carry on. I’ll have to be on my best game.
"To play our sport over there and introduce it to the Americans, hopefully they get behind it and support it. It’s set for the next few years so hopefully it keeps building towards the World Cup, I know the World Cup is over there in 2021.
"It’s good to catch up with the England boys, we had a good World Cup last year and we want to keep improving. It’s really important for us to have mid-season Tests.
"We played Samoa last year before the World Cup and it really helped us just to get the combinations and get us playing together. We really needed that.
"We’ve got a good opposition in the Kiwis and they’re probably going to have a few debutants. They want to prove they’re better than what they showed in the World Cup."
Whitehead joked an emergency text from Bennett telling him to bring Hodgson to Denver wouldn't have been far away after he orchestrated a thrashing of the Wests Tigers in his comeback game for Canberra.
Tapine was praying that message never came because "he’s that good of a player, I’d rather him stay in Australia" than fly to Denver to tackle the Kiwis.
While Hodgson didn't miss a beat in his return from the anterior cruciate ligament tear he suffered in his last game for England, he never entertained the thought of making an 11th hour comeback for the national side.
"You’re not going to get picked for a rep team, especially one as good as ours, after one game. I hope the boys go over there and get the win and then come back and we’ve got a job to do in Brisbane," Hodgson said.
Whitehead and Tapine are two of eight Raiders taking part in representative weekend, with Josh Papalii to play a big role in Queensland's bid to keep the State of Origin series alive against the NSW Blues at ANZ Stadium on Sunday night.
Tongan duo Siliva Havili and Ata Hingano will face Samoa's Joey Leilua and Dunamis Lui at Campbelltown Stadium on Saturday night, with an international double-header to be opened by Mikaele Ravalawa's Fiji against Papua New Guinea.
REPRESENTATIVE RAIDERS
Queensland Maroons - Josh Papalii
England - Elliott Whitehead
New Zealand - Joe Tapine
Tonga - Siliva Havili, Ata Hingano
Samoa - Joey Leilua, Dunamis Lui
Fiji - Mikaele Ravalawa
