North Queensland coach Todd Payten has overlooked Josh McGuire as Jason Taumalolo's replacement, leaving the former State of Origin representative on the bench ahead of Saturday's clash with St George Illawarra.
Taumalolo fractured his hand in the final play of Thursday's training session and is expected to be out for up to a month.
Saturday's clash with the Dragons was an opportunity for Taumalolo to bounce back after being sprayed by his coach about effort in round one.
With 229 NRL appearances, Josh McGuire seemed like the obvious choice as his replacement but Payten has named Reuben Cotter in the starting side.
"Josh just hasn't had enough running under his belt in the past preseason," he said.
"We can protect Josh with his minutes either side of half-time.
"Reubs (Cotter) is super fit, he's a super competitor and he will get the job done for as long as we need him to do it."
Payten also expects McGuire to push for a starting position in the coming months.
Losing Taumalolo spells danger for the Cowboys early in the 2021 NRL season.
North Queensland only won once without him in 2020, as he starred in 16 games for the year where he was third in the NRL in metres gained at 193 per game.
The powerful Tongan was also the only forward in the competition to crack the top 10 in that category.
Taumalolo will see a specialist on Friday to determine if surgery is required and if that's the case he could be out for a month.
"Worst case scenario at the moment, what they're telling me is it'll be a month, surgery will probably push it out to that month," Payten said.
"Knowing Jason's resilience and his toughness and the way that he heals, I'm probably expecting him to be a little bit quicker but we'll just make the right call about Jason's health and see what the specialists say."
