Newcastle veteran Jeremy Smith claims the Knights’ experienced squad won’t be daunted by the prospect of facing reigning premiers Melbourne in next Saturday’s qualifying final at AAMI Park.
Sunday’s impressive 22-6 win over Canterbury at ANZ Stadium set up a clash with the Storm, who lost 20-10 in their qualifying final against South Sydney last Friday.
Smith is one of seven premiership winners in the Knights squad alongside Willie Mason, Neville Costigan, Darius Boyd, Beau Scott, Craig Gower and Danny Buderus.
Although the Knights haven’t won in Melbourne in nine years, former Storm back-rower Smith said his side head to the Victorian capital full of confidence after comfortably holding the Bulldogs despite being down to 12 men for 10 minutes in the second half when Chris Houston was sin-binned.
“Defence wins games,” Smith said.
“We’ve worked hard on defence in the last couple of weeks and we’re definitely heading in the right direction.
“We’re underdogs every week, but we don’t talk about it much. But if we get it right we’ll beat any team on our day.
“You can’t buy experience and that’s something we have some of.
“That’s so important heading into next week. It’s do or die and we have nothing to lose and plenty to gain.”
Smith has sound knowledge of how Craig Bellamy will likely prepare his side for the Knights having been a part of the side that played in the 2007 grand final against Manly.
“They are a very good team but we just have to go down there with the belief that we can get the job done,” the 33-year-old said.
“It will be pretty much what you get from Melbourne at any time. They are pretty ruthless at what they do. We just have to hold the ball and match them.”
Gower is hopeful of being fit to face the Storm having undergone minor neck surgery last week.
The former Penrith skipper, who won the 2003 grand final, is likely to come into the side for Matt Hilder if he can prove his fitness.
“It’s good, I’ll train tomorrow (Monday) and go from there,” Gower said.
“I’ve still got to tackle and stuff, we’ll wait and see how it progresses and go from there.”
Bennett refused to discuss the clash with the Storm, but Knights skipper Jarrod Mullen said the win over the Bulldogs was a huge boost to the squad’s morale.
“We didn’t want to be here to make up the numbers,” he said.
“We know we want to give it a big crack. Everyone was confident going into today’s game.
“We’re just going to grow in confidence and looking forward to next week.”
In a weekend dominated by refereeing controversies, Sunday’s was relatively incident-free, but Bennett was upset by the decision to sin bin Houston.
Houston was sent to the sidelines for a professional foul after impeding Michael Ennis three minutes after halftime.
“I thought it was extremely harsh. I don’t know where he (Houston) was supposed to go,” Bennett said.
Manly and Cronulla will kick off week two of the finals at Allianz Stadium next Friday night.
