Wests Tigers forward leader Aaron Woods says Manly prop Jason King has provided the ideal blueprint on how to defeat South Sydney – get under Sam Burgess’ skin.
King’s tough treatment of George Burgess had Sam hot under the collar in Manly’s upset 14-12 NRL win over the Rabbitohs last week and Woods was at it again in the Tigers’ impressive 25-16 victory over Souths on Friday night.
In the ninth minute of the round three fixture, with Souths enjoying an early 6-0 lead, a Woods tackle on George Burgess, upset his brother Sam who came flying in to deal with the NSW representative and was lucky not to be sinbinned for his actions.
Woods said the incident was a turning point.
“Sam came running in, he overreacted, George wants to keep pushing forward when he is on his knees so you have to fold him back and win the ruck,” Wood said.
“If Sam wants to tackle for no reason, we got the penalty and that’s what turned the game.
“Everybody talks up the four Burgess brothers and we wanted to put it on them early.
“Everybody talks about their four brothers, we have 17 here so we don’t really care about them.
“They wanted to carry on a bit once we got in their faces, I think Manly showed the way to play against them last week so we just took that from their books.
“They wanted to carry on a bit and once they started with that we didn’t take a backward step, it was one in all in.
“Manly and Jason King took it to them last week and we just wanted to follow into that.
“I don’t really bother about Sam to be honest with you, I don’t know if he plays prop, back-row or lock, whatever it is.”
Woods said his renewed partnership with fellow prop Keith Galloway was instrumental in the win.
“It is the second time in 18 months we have played together so to play with Big Keithy is great, it takes a lot of numbers to get him down and we play on the back of each other,” he said.
“We just said we didn’t want to take a backward step if they want to put it on, we put it back on them.”