Melbourne's Ryan Papenhuyzen is ready for a fullback face off with Rabbitohs star James Tedesco.
Former teammates at the Wests Tigers, the duo are set for a showdown in Saturday night's preliminary final at the SCG.
Papenhuyzen recalls looking up to Tedesco during their days at the Tigers.
"He [Tedesco] would always say g'day when he walked past in the corridors," Papenhuyzen told NRL.com.
"Those sort of people you always have a bit of a relationship with as you respect that sort of thing being a young player.
"He has had a similar journey. He had heaps of injuries through his junior career and he is a star of the game now.
"He has had his own adversity and so have I, so I sort of look up to him in that regard."
Papenhuyzen said he and Tedesco have remained friends.
"We are mates, we chat, but we won't be mates on the weekend," Papenhuyzen said.
"After the game we will sit down and talk ... we are enemies on the weekend now.
"I have got to do lots of video on him and make sure we shut him down because he is very dangerous."
Despite coming off an impressive win over the Eels on the weekend, Papenhuyzen believes the Storm will need to step it up a notch to take down the reigning premiers.
"They [the Roosters] are flying at the moment and we will need to be better than we were against Parra," he said.
"We need to keep stepping up from here, as I keep being told by all the senior boys so we need to take our game to the next level."
The Roosters and Storm will square off at 7:05pm in Saturday night's SCG clash, with the winner going through to the grand final.
Ben Cotton for the record, James Tedesco hasn’t signed for Souffs yet.
705pm kick off too…..
Hasn’t signed yet?
Chookfeed, Souths wouldn’t be able match 1.5m a year and stay under the cap.
Easy on the long necks.
From what League fan observers have witnessed this season with South Sydney if they had another 1.5 million dollar’s to spend, it would be squandered on an influx of non influential second rate imports. Not on one super elite quality player.
The previous policy was one quality player but he retired at the start of the season an alcoholic, this appears to have spooked South Sydney into buying quantity, rather than quality.
Go Pappy, lets see you go like a fox in the hen coop.
Will be an arm wrestle early but once the storm take control Papenhuyzen will cut loose.
Teddy Mercury gets flustered under pressure and mistakes like in R25 will reoccur with missed tackles and knock ons.
Storm comfortably.
Just like he did the first week of finals.
30-6
Chody walker has proven every time he is not a big game player and the useless ball hog will be exposed again this week. What sort of half gets benched during a origin match?
A Dud
Back2smack and GoneWest shame the MRC and judiciary weren’t read the Riot Act one week earlier.
If so Sam B would have rightfully played, Hargrot, Cornfed and Tetenus would have been suspended for 2 weeks.
Also good to see Klein finally held accountable after diabolical bias not only in the storm game but rooster games last 2 years
Getting closer to en even playing field.
No cheap shot Hargrot this week and Keary gone after 20 mins its goodbye chickens for 2019.
What are the odds of the chickens somehow securing the services of Ashley Klein against the Storm?
Imagine the uproar but then again it’s the roosters we are dealing with here.
Hoping for a Canberra v Storm Grand Final. That would be a beaut.
I’m with you Rucky!
Go Raiders , Go Storm!
How good could the Tigers team be , with a lot of its own players back!
Tedesco , Suli, Masters, Papenhuyzen, Moses, Taupau etc… Add those players to the current team. Premiership winning team!