By Rachael Price
St George Illawarra Dragons winger Jason Nightingale is enthusiastic about wearing the ISC Marvel Super Heroes Iron Man jersey when they square-up against the Sydney Roosters at Allianz Stadium, Moore Park on Saturday.
Despite their recent loss against the Newcastle Knights, the New Zealand international is not writing the Roosters off as an easy win and believes they may be ready to bounce back before their run to the Finals.
The 27-year-old is aware of the weaknesses in the Red-and-Whites’ game but is confident the side has done enough at training to get the victory against the defending Premiers.
“I’m really looking forward to running out in the Iron Man jersey for the Marvel Superheroes round,” said Nightingale.
“We’ve been setting ourselves some high benchmarks so Mary and Creagh have been picking the game apart so we know what to focus on in training.
“We have been below those benchmarks with retaining the ball and the error rate and those are the things we’ve been concentrating on in training.
“We’ve been working on not having lulls in our games and we know we had that straight after halftime against Wests Tigers.
“We play very well in long patches but those short lapses are our biggest let down; every team in the competition is trying to stay in the game for 80 minutes but there are very few who can pull it off.
“We’re not going to win many games at the business end of the season if we’re not putting in full performances and working at full capacity.
“The teams who make it to the Finals will be the ones who work for it 100 per cent.
“It’s not always a good thing to play against a team that isn’t winning games; they’ll be fired up against us.
“The reigning Premiers are going to be tough and we know we have to play at the top of our game if we want to beat them.
“I’m really looking forward to testing ourselves against them; we’ve come up against some benchmark sides of the competition and played reasonably well but we definitely need to put in a winning performance on Saturday.”
