Manly Sea Eagles Coach Trent Barrett is mindful of the dangers of taking on Newcastle Knights this Monday.
The Knights were thrashed 53-0 by premiership heavyweights Brisbane last weekend and although many see a Sea Eagles victory following their strong showing against the Eels, Barrett will ensure his players are cautious of the wounded Knights on their home turf of Hunter Stadium.
“It is never a good time to get a team after they have been beaten like that. They did have a lot of injury concerns and three concussions certainly didn’t help them,’’ Barrett said this morning.
“We won’t read anything into that scoreline at all.
“Newcastle at Newcastle is a different proposition. They are always hard to beat (there) and they are having a real go. They have got two good halves, a very good kicking game, and we are going to have to play well to beat them.
“There will be a fair bit of emotion (going) into the game being Anzac Day and the Newcastle crowd always gets behind their team, so we are going to have to be good.
“This is a really important game and these two points are huge for us.”
Barrett said his players have benefited this week since their loss to Parramatta Eels at Brookvale Oval last Thursday following the horrendous five day turnarounds over the past month.
“We had to give them three days off again. Everyone is good to go,’’ Barrett said.
“The effects of the (five day turnarounds) will hang around for a while. I was really happy with their effort. To win three of those five games, it was a big effort and we probably could have nearly won all of them.
“I thought we let the Souths game and the Parramatta game get away from us. We just have to learn from it.
“It was just good to get a really good session in on Wednesday. It was the first time we have been able to get a couple hours of work into them for a good month. It means we can practice things rather than work them out after game day.”
