Rugby League: Paul brothers hit the ground running

By Peter Jessup

The Paul boys have an ominous warning for the Aussies: they are rediscovering the instincts they have had for each other's play since they were kids.

The Pauls - Henry and Robbie - stepped off a flight from Manchester at 6 am yesterday and went straight to the Kiwis' training session.

Henry had slept for 15 hours and Robbie had no sleep at all, but both are deadly keen for Friday night's encounter with Australia.

"It's never easy to go half-way around the world and play, but you take it with a professional attitude," Robbie Paul said, adding that he had had the centre seat of three on the plane and had watched two movies, while his brother slept on one side and "a rather large gentleman" snored on the other.

"You just have to deal with it. We'll recover. We won't use it as an excuse - there are no excuses in this game."

Team doctor Mary Holden prescribes a naturally occurring and IOC-approved stimulant, melatonin, to change the traveller's time-clock and ease them over the effects of jetlag.

"You need around a week to balance out the ill-effects of every hour on the plane," she said.

But there were no signs of rustiness from the two Bradford Bulls players as the full Kiwi side ran for the first time.

After a 90-minute session concentrated on attacking combinations, and with very few dropped balls as they worked, Robbie Paul came off Ericsson Stadium's grass declaring himself happy to have the chance to work out the anguish of losing Sunday's grand final to St Helens.

"It gets my mind on something else - it's an opportunity to set the record straight," he said, referring to both the Super League loss and this year's Anzac test close call.

The nucleus of the Kiwi side had been together for a couple of years and there was a new confidence that they could foot it with the Aussies, who they had traditionally regarded as the deserved world champions, he said.

"Everyone is comfortable with everyone else."

No more so than him and his brother after a season together with the Bulls.

Robbie Paul's first game of league was with his older brother when he was four.

They went through the age-group grades in different teams, coming together only in the Te Atatu seniors for a year before Henry left for Wigan.

But through the years they had had an instinct for each other's moves born of backyard play, and it was starting to return after what for him had been a season interrupted with a foot injury, Robbie said.

"We know each other's game better than anyone on the field.

"I see Henry's body language and I know he's going to step or go for the gap. If I'm not up there in support I say to myself 'I knew that was going to happen, why wasn't I there?'

"But that sort of combination started to work towards the end of the season - it's coming together."

The pair liked the look of the Kiwi squad, with plenty of size and plenty of ball-playing skills.

They would not be taking new Australian halfback Brett Kimmorley or the other newcomers any more lightly than they did Alf Langer and company. "Kimmorley's a busy player," Robbie Paul said, having taken extra interest in his game in the NRL grand final. "It's going to be interesting to see which of their ball players they use. Hopefully they'll get in each others' way."

But they would never go in to the match over-confident.

He said: "The boys are all pros - they all have plenty of respect for the opposition."