League: Depleted Kiwis face big mission

Kiwis player Sam Perrett says everything is going 'as normal as we could hope'. Photo / Dean Purcell

It will be a banged up and depleted Kiwis line-up that attempts to repeat history against the Kangaroos in the Four Nations final in Brisbane tonight.

There was a stark contrast in yesterday's captain's runs, with the super fit-looking Kangaroos frolicking in the 29C heat and playing a full squad game of walking touch rugby for the benefit of the watching television camera crews.

The Kiwis opted to replicate tonight's match conditions by warming up in their changing shed. But there were some notable absentees when they emerged and went straight into a high tempo draw-and-pass drill.

Lock Jeremy Smith and centre Junior Sa'u - who will both be given until the last possible moment to prove their fitness - walked laps around the pitch with a hobbling Frank Pritchard. With Manu Vatuvei watching sporting an above-the-elbow cast on his broken arm, coach Stephen Kearney has patched together his final line-up from an increasingly busted squad.

Having slotted in alongside Sam Perrett for the captain's run, Simon Mannering is set to reprise the centre role he filled during the 2008 World Cup final should Sa'u fail to recover from the corked thigh he suffered in a brutal training session on Wednesday.

The Kiwis were quick to put up the shutters, with media escorted out of Suncorp Stadium after just a handful of minutes. That was long enough, however, to spot Issac Luke taking the first turn at dummy half while Thomas Lealuai stood behind the posts.

Luke has been ineffective off the bench so far but whether coach Stephen Kearney will promote the Rabbitohs match-winner to start ahead of the impressive Lealuai remains to be seen.

Certainly the coach and the senior players detailed to talk to the media - Lealuai and Perrett - were giving nothing away. "Everything is going as normal as we could hope," Perrett said.

The winger was in the firing line as Kangaroos right edge duo Brent Tate and Brett Morris ran amok in Auckland last week, but he was confident the Kiwis would not be caught short again.

Whether Mannering gets the job of shutting down former Warriors team-mate Tate, the focus would be on defending as a unit, Perrett said.

"The defence on the edges there has been a big focus for us the whole week. We have pretty much done everything we could. We've just got to leave it to game day now."

Perrett was the fall guy in Auckland, but the real problem was the massive advantage in ruck speed enjoyed by the Australians.

"If something in the middle is going wrong it can affect you really badly on the edge," Perrett said. "We have addressed all the bits and pieces and hopefully that is going to be the case - the boys will do well in the middle, we'll do well on the edge and we'll have a good team result."

A Kiwis side that has now notched just one win in 13 contests against Australia has had just seven days to turn things around but Lealuai believed that was ample time.

"A lot of stuff you need to turn around is an attitude thing, so that can be done in a couple of days," he said. "We'll soon find out."

The Kangaroos won't reveal their line-up until shortly before kick-off but Queensland forward Nate Myles is heavily tipped to come in for Petero Civoniceva. The dummy-half running threat from the likes of Lealuai was cited as the main reason Civoniceva asked to be stood down, but Lealuai wasn't fully buying that line.

"I've heard that like you [the media] have heard that but I wasn't there to see it," he said. "[Civoniceva] is a great player so I'd be very surprised if he ruled himself out of a game of this calibre."

Having left skipper Darren Lockyer and fullback Billy Slater out of last week's match, the Kangaroos are confident they haven't yet fully revealed their hand.

"We certainly didn't play all of our cards because we have three or four blokes that didn't play that game playing [tonight]," hooker Cameron Smith said. "I guess that will keep the Kiwis guessing a little bit."

Regardless of the make-up of the line-ups, the game would be decided by some good old-fashioned basics, Smith said.

"It's whoever holds on to the ball the best and whoever wants to defend the longest. Last week we did both things quite well for the majority of the match but we know this week we're going to have to do it for 80 minutes, because we're not going to see the Kiwi side we saw last week."

KANGAROOS v KIWIS
Suncorp Stadium, 10.15 tonight

Kangaroos
Billy Slater
Brett Morris
Brent Tate
Willie Tonga
Lote Tuqiri
D. Lockyer (c)
Cooper Cronk
Matthew Scott
Cameron Smith
David Shillington
Luke Lewis
Sam Thaiday
Paul Gallen
Interchange (from): Tom Learoyd-Lahrs, Petero Civoniceva, Greg Bird, Kurt Gidley, Nate Myles, Anthony Watmough, Darius Boyd

Kiwis
Lance Hohaia
J. Nightingale
S. Kenny-Dowall
Junior Sa'u
Sam Perrett
Benji Marshall (c)
Nathan Fien
Greg Eastwood
Thomas Leuluai
Adam Blair
Bronson Harrison
Simon Mannering
Jeremy Smith
Interchange (from): Issac Luke, Ben Matulino, Frank-Paul Nuuausala, Sam McKendry, Sika Manu, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, Lewis Brown