After laying the season’s platform with two hard fought wins, coach Rick Stone assures the Newcastle Knights are anything but complacent coming into the round three clash against the Gold Coast Titans.
“We understand the enormity of going up there and getting the job done,” Stone told the media on Tuesday.
“Every week you have to prepare to win an NRL game, particularly an away NRL game and a lot of effort, execution and effort goes into getting the job done.
“We are pretty focused about where we are up to and take every game as it comes, respect every opposition that we’ve got and train accordingly to prepare for the particular weekend."
Stone put the squad through a challenging training session on Tuesday, their first return to Knights HQ after returning from Townsville.
“Sometimes the boys need a bit of a sharpen up, it’s the boys first session and are a little bit rusty today,” he said.
“At times I challenged them a little bit on their execution, their focus and concentration.
“Every time you win a game you get a little bit softer in the head.
“I’ll keep doing that as we go along because they all need to be reminded at some stage.
“We’ve put two wins behind us, if we can execute and keep competing as hard as we can, and be a bit better with our discipline, we are going to give ourselves a chance on Sunday.”
Meanwhile, Beau Scott was cleared to play in this Sunday’s match after he entered an early plea to a Grade 1 dangerous contact charge for a tackle on Johnathan Thurston in the round two win.
Stone assured the team has moved past the incident and has shifted their full attention onto preparing for Sunday’s game.
“We’ve moved on and are getting ready for the Gold Coast," he added.
"We’re happy to have our NSW and Australian back rower playing every week if we can.
“I don’t think Beau would be too stressed about it. He plays hard and competes hard every week and I don’t think you’re going to get too much different this week.
“We competed hard in the game and got the two points, which was our goal and now we are getting over that and are moving on to Gold Coast.
“I know we didn’t set out to intentionally do a job on JT (Thurston), we know you have to minimize JT every time you play against them and if you give him enough time and space, he’ll pick you off and he’s done that to us plenty of times when we’ve gone up there before.
“He plays it tough and he plays it fair and the last thing he’d want to do is actually hurt anyone.
“We have an in house idea of what we want to stand for and how we want to play every game and how hard we want to compete.
“We have shown a little bit of that in the first two weeks and I’d like to think it’s not going to change."
