Thaiday relishes opportunity to send Origin trio packing
SAM Thaiday played alongside Cameron Smith in nine State of Origin series wins, seven with Billy Slater as a teammate and six with Cooper Cronk.
But the quality of his three Maroons brothers makes Thaiday want to see them on the losing side even more in Friday’s preliminary final against their Storm club.
“It just makes you want to beat them, because you know what type of competitors they are,’’ Thaiday said.
“We definitely know what they are going to bring. We’d love to get down to Melbourne, really upset them and hopefully rattle their cage a bit.
“The week off isn’t always necessarily a good thing either.
“We’ve been able to work on combinations and get a couple of players back. We will be battle ready. I love being an underdog. We are looking forward to the challenge.”
Cronk is two wins from signing off from his Storm career with another grand final triumph.
Thaiday said he had passed his concussion test that forced him from the field 13 minutes from fulltime in the semi- final and would be cleared to play against Melbourne.
Thaiday and Darius Boyd are the only active players who played in Brisbane’s last premiership side 11 years ago.
On Friday night, the Broncos have to end a sequence of losses in seven finals matches away from Suncorp Stadium.
“Darius was probably 90 per cent ( recovered from a hamstring injury last week) and hopefully we can get him and Tevita Pangai Jr ( hamstring) back as well,’’ Thaiday said.
“We made it hard for ourselves ( in beating Penrith 13- 6 last Friday), turning over a lot of cheap ball. We can’t do that next week.”
While Brisbane are currently playing a more unstructured style of attack than the eliminated Parramatta, Thaiday said there were lessons the Broncos should draw from how the Eels played in losing their elimination final against Melbourne by two points.