Canberra players don’t expect to be able to make light work of Adam Reynolds if they target South Sydney’s right-side defence in Friday night’s preliminary final.
The Rabbitohs conceded two tries and four linebreaks through their right edge in Friday’s win over Manly, as the Sea Eagles repeatedly ran traffic down that side.
Halfback Reynolds had the worst defensive night of his career, missing a personal-high nine tackles.
Second-rower Sam Burgess didn’t fare much better as he also missed four alongside him.
It appears likely Burgess could spend more time in the middle on Friday night, after Queensland State of Origin forward Ethan Lowe trained at left edge earlier this week.
But regardless, Raiders five-eighth Jack Wighton didn’t expect last week to be lingering on the Rabbitohs’ minds when he attack that edge this weekend.
“You look at it, but you take nothing out of it,” he said.
“They’ll fix that. We’ll be throwing what we’ve got at them, but we won’t be expecting soft tries.
“You know what finals is like. With the class of players they’ve got it’s something that’s easily fixed. But we’ll definitely be throwing some shape at them.”
However, there is no doubt that shape could trouble the Rabbitohs.
Canberra’s left created 35 tries in the regular season, making them the fourth most potent of all clubs on that side.
Jarrod Croker has scored 12 of those at left centre, while Wighton has 10 try assists and second-rower Elliott Whitehead has seven.
Souths’ right were relatively stable through the season, before their woes in the finals.
The Roosters ran two tries in down that side in the opening game of the playoffs, including one with a short ball close to the line that has troubled Souths in recent weeks.
“Yeah definitely (look at last week). But I know Wayne (Bennett), he’ll tie it up and fix that. They’ll be looking at that and areas to fix up,” Whitehead said.
“It’s something we will look at in video and definitely something that will get brought up.
“We’ll look at it and see if there is something in our game plan we can work around that.”
“But if we do what we do well, we will be okay. We have proven that all year. We don’t want to start changing stuff just for the sake of it.”