King motivated to prolong NRL career

Manly veteran Jason King has come to terms with retiring from the NRL, but he isn’t ready to go just yet.

King will hang up the boots at the end of the season, giving the Sea Eagles co-captain added motivation to inspire his embattled side to victory in Saturday night’s elimination final against Canterbury at Allianz Stadium.

The 33-year-old frontrower missed Manly’s 2011 premiership as well as last year’s grand final with injury and he’s determined to avoid further heartache in his farewell campaign.

King and the Manly forwards were completely dominated by South Sydney last weekend and will be without NSW backrower Anthony Watmough for the battle against a sizeable Canterbury pack.

For his part, King is ready for the challenge.

“For my own personal (reasons), definitely I want to play more than one game of NRL football that’s for sure,” said King.

“I’ll be doing everything I can to try and improve my performance for the team next week to try and get the win.”

The Sea Eagles were humiliated 40-24 by the Rabbitohs and are sweating on at least getting hooker Matt Ballin (fractured leg) back to bolster the forward stocks against the Bulldogs.

King said they needed to try to find some positives out of last week’s loss and believes Manly can draw inspiration from last year’s finals when they lost first up to the Roosters and still made the grand final.

Earlier this season the Sea Eagles pack was decimated by the Wests Tigers big-boppers, yet bounced back and carried Manly to second place on the table.

“We’ve definitely got to take something out of everything this year and our past because we need to get the win,” King said.

“No doubt we’ll be relying on every ounce of energy and experience that we’ve had.

“We’ve got to dust things off and identify areas we need to improve. There’s no point focusing on the scoreline.

“There could be minor adjustments (from last week) but nothing drastic.”

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