By Mary Maidiotis
St George Illawarra Dragons lock Trent Merrin is looking forward to building upon recent momentum when they face the Newcastle Knights at Hunter Stadium, Newcastle on Saturday.
The NSW Blues representative admits he is impressed with the way the team is working together to shut the opposition down and believes the Red V can build on that momentum and start a roll on.
The Dragons have won their previous two matches from as many games and will this round face the Knights for the right to hold the inaugural Alex McKinnon Cup.
“It was awesome to get another win tonight, especially in front of a good home-crowd at Wollongong, they were very vocal and that helped us get over the line,” said Merrin.
“I think the second half of last week we built some consistency so we knew we had to start pretty fast and strong tonight and we did so, and we took that all the way into the 80th minute.
“I reckon I did my job for the team and that’s what everyone in that room was expected to do, I know everyone did their job and we played really well as a team and that’s something which we can build on into next week.
“If I had to pick individual players, Mike Cooper and Jack de Belin were stand outs tonight in my opinion, but I think our whole middle really stood out for me.
“We had a real big job to do, there was a big build-up about Willie Mason during the week and I think we handled that really well.
“Looking towards next week we just need to build off what we’ve been doing, I think the second-half of last week and tonight, we’re just building consistency.
“We’re going up against a great team in Newcastle who got over the Panthers, so it’s going to be a tough one and we’ve just got to prepare the way we did for this week and do the job next week.”
