Bennett dares Joey to run his own show
Email Print Normal font Large font September 15, 2006 - 4:59PM
Brisbane coach Wayne Bennett has dared Newcastle maestro Andrew Johns to try to carry the depleted Knights on his own back in Saturday night's NRL semi-final at Aussie Stadium.
The Knights go into the sudden-death clash minus key figures Danny Buderus and Steve Simpson, the latter ruled out Friday morning with a shoulder injury.
The loss of the representative duo - in particular Buderus - is expected to put even more pressure on Johns to lead the Knights to victory.
Few would put it past him to do just that after all Johns will go down as one of the greatest players of all time when he does finally hang up his boots, but Bennett believes it could play right into their hands.
"They'll be trying not to (rely just on Johns) and you hope it gets to that stage where he has to take more of that responsibility," Bennett said Friday following the side's final training run at Aussie Stadium.
"He's like (Broncos five-eighth Darren) Lockyer if Lockyer gets too much responsibility out there, they become ineffective because they try too hard.
"Hopefully that might be a benefit for us, in the end things mightn't be going the way he wants them because he and Danny are so familiar with each other's play and he might just try a little bit harder and may not be just quite as effective."
Johns has shown a willingness in recent times to try and share the spotlight with his teammates.
In response to serving a two-week ban for verbally abusing a touch judge, Johns handed over the captaincy duties to Simpson - which will be passed over to Matt Gidley on Saturday night.
With the scores locked at 18-all and only minutes on the clock against Manly last Friday night, Johns, having just missed a field goal attempt of his own, instructed Jarrod Mullen to take the next attempt which the 19-year-old duly piloted straight through the posts.
Whether he will be as unselfish on Saturday night remains to be seen with Knights coach Michael Hagan admitting Johns had assumed more responsibility in the lead-up to the meeting with the Broncos.
"Once it was established that Danny wouldn't be playing and probably Simmo to a lesser degree, he's taken that leadership role a bit more this week," Hagan said.
"All of a sudden he's become one of the key leaders in the team ... I think it's only a matter of responsibility that once a couple of blokes like that leave the team he'll (Johns) step up and take it to another gear."
If both sides start the way they finished last week, Saturday night's encounter might be over by the break.
With Buderus and Simpson by his side and a boisterous crowd behind him, Johns put it into overdrive scoring one try himself and setting up the other three to get the Knights home despite trailing 12-0 at halftime.
The Broncos on the hand capitulated against the Dragons, a soft try to Dragons prop Luke Bailey just after the restart which signalled the beginning of the end for Brisbane.
"We haven't played all that well this year when we've been in that situation," Bennett said in reference to coming back from a halftime deficit.
"We tend to overplay, our champion players try too hard.
"We changed the way we played because we were under pressure and we didn't handle it."
Bennett will wait until Saturday to make a decision on who to cut from his five-man bench, utility Casey McGuire still overcoming the effects of a virus.
The Knights have brought Parramatta-bound backrower Todd Lowrie into their squad for Simpson, with Kirk Reynoldson expected to come off the bench to start the match.
