The interstate opener is six weeks away and already there are headaches – some pleasant and some less so – for the NSW hierarchy. If Paul Gallen and Robbie Farah don’t recover from injury in time, Daley will be forced to appoint a new skipper.

There are also concerns other senior players, such as Luke Lewis and halves contender Jarrod Mullen, are also underdone after missing action in the early stages of the season.

Those setbacks have been tempered by the strong form of Canterbury’s Josh Reynolds and Parramatta hooker Nathan Peats, while Jorge Taufua made a successful return against Cronulla on Sunday. Another revelation has been Richards, who returned to the Tigers after an eight-year stint with  Wigan Warriors in the Super League.

Asked if Richards was on his radar, Daley said:  ‘‘Yeah, he’s been great, he’s playing in a team up there near the top. He’s a guy who has plenty of experience and is a guy who we’ll continue to monitor along with a couple of the others.

‘‘Taufua was strong on the weekend, [James] McManus is starting to play  good football, [Akuila] Uate, [Will] Hopoate is playing reasonable footy as well. We’ve got players there starting to play well and are competing for spots. That’s good for us.’’

One advantage Richards has  is his goal-kicking ability. The Irish international is the NRL’s leading points-scorer and would become an even more attractive proposition if incumbent Blue and goalkicker James Maloney is omitted.

Daley said thought would be given to goal-kicking options given the closeness of recent series. ‘‘It’s something we’ll obviously look at because over the past couple of years it’s been quite tight,’’ he said. ‘‘You’d like to have a recognised goal-kicker, but if we need to take someone in who isn’t a recognised goal-kicker, we will. We’d have to weigh up our options and what our back-up plan is and go from there. You want to be picking guys playing really good football and if they can kick goals, that’s great.’’