Roy Asotasi has warned his South Sydney teammates that if they don’t stop Canterbury’s vaunted pack then they risk letting Dally M winner Ben Barba running riot in Saturday night’s preliminary final.
Bulldogs coach Des Hasler cultivated his minor-premiership winning squad this season around a bruising pack boasting international pair Frank Pritchard and James Graham, and young stars Aiden Tolman and Sam Kasiano.
It is rounded out by former State of Origin representatives Michael Ennis and David Stagg, and it’s the best pack the Dogs have offered up since Asotasi was lining up alongside Willie Mason and Sonny Bill Williams.
As a result the Rabbitohs co-captain is adamant about firing up his own impressive engine room of Dave Taylor, Michael Crocker and Sam Burgess – saying they’ll need to lift from last week’s 38-16 thumping of Canberra.
“If you’re not focusing on those players and if you can’t stop them, then you’re going to let guys like Ben Barba have a lot of room to do what he needs to do best,” Asotasi told AAP.
“We do (need to step up). Bulldogs have always had that perception of being mentally tough and we understand that.
“We’ll go into this game a lot different than we did against Canberra because we understand the Bulldogs have been the benchmark side all year.
“That’s the reason why they’re here. They have a lot of good players.
“If we don’t do our work and preparation, and focus you’ll find the Bulldogs pretty much running riot over us.”
Meanwhile, 51,000 tickets have been sold for Saturday but Asotasi argues the Rabbitohs won’t be spooked by the huge crowd, which is expected to top 70,000.
Souths players admitted they were caught up in the hype of the Rabbitohs’ first finals quest since 2007 when they were belted 24-6 by Melbourne in their qualifying final a fortnight ago.
But Asotasi vowed that the same will not happen this week, despite the enormous crowd expected to fill ANZ Stadium to watch them face the Bulldogs.
Asotasi argues they got the butterflies out of their system in the Canberra victory.
“The pressure won’t get to us this week,” Asotasi said.
“In the first week of the finals I think a few of us got caught up in that, and we learned that lesson and took it into the second week (against the Raiders).
“As much as you’re going to have such a great crowd out there making noise, we’ll be going in with the same gameplan.
“That’s why I’m glad we got that second week to fix that problem up.
“The first week was about finals football and how different it is.
“A lot of boys hadn’t played finals football and got caught up in it.
“To be able to refocus and even though we had 40,000 the following week the boys didn’t let that get to them.”