Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy says they can’t rely on returning stars Billy Slater, Cameron Munster and Suliasi Vunivalu to be the difference in Friday night’s NRL qualifying final against Souths.
The key trio missed their last-round loss to Penrith but are certain starters for the AAMI Park clash.
“We’ve got some key personnel coming back into the team, which is nice, but we need to make sure we’re doing things a little bit better than we did last week with the footy,” Bellamy said.
“Even though we had an inexperienced side there were things there – we squandered a few chances and we need to be better than that.”
Bellamy has retained Jahrome Hughes at halfback to face the Rabbitohs but said he was still open to changing his No.7 through the finals.
“It’s been a bit of a roundabout with our halves but we’ll go with who we think is the right guy for our team and a little bit of that is probably who our opposition is so we will take it week by week.
“We’ve been changing them all year so we’ve had plenty of practice at it.”
Souths won their last meeting with Bellamy saying his team didn’t defend well enough or control the ball as they needed to.
He said hooker Damien Cook ran well off the back of Souths’ big pack while their halves Cody Walker and Adam Reynolds were also a major threat.
His team would also be on high alert for big game specialist Greg Inglis, who Bellamy coached at Melbourne for six seasons.
“We all know what GI is capable of and what he’s done in big games,” Bellamy said.
“He’s always been a wonderful player but all of his wonderful moments have probably been in big games and we’re well aware of that.”