Melbourne Storm skipper Cameron Smith says his side doesn’t need talk of their fierce rivalry with Manly to fire-up for Friday night’s NRL final, with a grand final berth enough motivation.
Much has been made of the hostilities between the two most dominant NRL teams of the past 10 years, with emotions coming to a head in 2011 in the Battle of Brookvale.
Ahead of their preliminary final at AAMI Park on Friday night, Smith said winning rather than beating Manly was the primary goal.
“It’s a big game, we’re playing for a spot in the grand final, so I don’t think there’s too much time for anyone to think about doing too much else except playing footy on the field,” Smith said.
“Manly are a great side and they know how to win at this time of year.
“We need to put all the emotion aside, it’s about going out and making sure we perform well as a team.”
The Storm are set to include some big bodies in props Jason Ryles and Sika Manu as well as second-rower Todd Lowrie, who are all returning from injury after missing the impressive qualifying win over Souths.
Size was an area Melbourne identified as a deficiency when they were bundled out by the Warriors at the same point last year.
Smith said they knew they had to get off to a fast start and try to withstand all that the battled-hardened Sea Eagles threw at them.
“Manly enjoy the physicality of the game, they like the contact early on and they like trying to get on top of their opposition and really getting momentum and rolling from there,” he said.
“We know what we have to do, we have to start well and try to withstand that punishment that Manly brings and if we do that well, we put ourselves in a good spot to go further.”
An undermanned Storm outfit won their last clash 26-22 in round 15 in June at Brookvale, when the teams were backing up after Origin.
While it was an important victory at the time, Smith said it counted for little now.
“Billy (Slater) was out injured, I was playing five-eighth and Gareth (Widdop) was at fullback and we’d just come off Origin, so it was a tough one for us to win and it was a great performance by everyone,” he said.
“It’s a totally different game for us, we’re not looking back at the match.
“They’re playing really well at the moment, they probably weren’t playing their best football at that time. The Storm announced that approximately 8,000 tickets had been sold for the match with only five per cent bought by Manly fans.
