Sydney Roosters Coach Trent Robinson says his team are focused and ready to execute a clear game plan when they travel to AAMI Park to face the Melbourne Storm in a Semi Final on Friday night.
Robinson and his squad are no strangers to sudden death matches, working tirelessly to keep their season alive for the past six weeks, but the three-time Premiership-winning Coach says his team are determined to build on their elimination final performance.
Robinson: 'We Want To Go After This Game'
“I think we’re still searching for improvement. I think there's things last week that we looked at and we said look we think we can get better at those,” he said.
“Our defence has been improving but we still sat down on Monday and sort of thought hang on, we need to tweak this or that.
“The defence is always the backbone of your game. Last week we didn't execute well in the first half and then we lost some players in the second half were kept to 13 points but because of the backbone of D, it kept them to 12.
“I won't ever put restrictions on what we're capable of with the ball tomorrow night, but our job is to put that backbone in place again with the defence.
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“We set that up, we put that in place and then the execution will decide how many points we score, so the process of that won't change and we need to make sure that that is the foundation of our game.”
Although the Roosters will be without Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, Billy Smith and Joseph Manu for the must-win match, Robinson is confident the new-look back-line can step up to the challenge.
“They're [injuries] uncontrollable those ones, he said. “Suaalii there was no choice, Joey Manu there was no choice and Billy Smith got operated on yesterday so there was no choice.”
“Those guys that we believe in, that have played a lot of footy are coming in and yeah we just continued the belief in the squad.
“A lot of people have been talking about who's not there, so we’ve spent all week talking about who is there and their qualities and what they bring and they can bring their strengths, which sometimes in some areas are better than the Joeys.
“It's not about what's not there, it's what is there and then slight adaptions to their skillset and we think we've done that and now we need to execute it.”
The Tricolours mentor says the team will look to build on their strengths and refine their internal focus ahead of the Semi Final.
“You have to have a game plan for the side that you’ve got, but then you've also got to play your style of footy, so you don't turn everything upside down,” Robinson explained.
“You know the strength is in the forward pack that is consistent, there’s guys that have been out for probably a longer period of time but then you’re also confident in the execution that these guys can have in the backline, our spine’s intact.
We're going down there with a clear game plan, but also a belief in how we want to attack the game and what we think we're capable of.
- Trent Robinson
As the Roosters versus Storm rivalry enters another chapter, Robinson says his team are prepared to throw everything at the Melbourne-based side as they hunt their seventh-straight win.
“We’ve played a lot of Semi Final games and we’ve been going toe-to-toe for a long time, so there's a respect there but there's also a hunger to attack each other,” he said.
“That's why I think they are memorable games and that’s no different for this game.
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“When you’ve been cycling at the top enough, we'll run into each other enough and we really want to go after this game.
“There is no tomorrow, that's been our mantra for a while now.
“It doesn't matter, we haven't looked past this week and we know who we're playing and we know what we've got to do, so we emptied the tank last week and we’ll empty the tank again on Friday.”
