Storm to stand up

COOPER Cronk says the pressure on Melbourne to win the premiership is warranted but has no impact on their performance.

Halfback Cronk, 34, yesterday declared he would do “everything possible” for the Storm to be playing their best football in the finals.

“You never take for granted opportunities to play in finals because, at the end of the day, the thing about finals is that it tests you mentally (and) it tests you physically,” Cronk said.

“It’s just basically doing what you’ve done all year. Do it a little bit faster, do it a little bit stronger and do it for a little bit longer than the opposition.”

He paid tribute to captain Cameron Smith, who will play a record 356th NRL game in Saturday’s qualifying final against Parramatta.

The Storm squad yesterday trained wearing special shirts to mark the occasion, complete with No.9s on their backs.

“You could honestly say the gap between his first, second, 100th, 200th and 355th game in terms of his performance is about that much (indicates small gap),” Cronk said.