While much of the pre-match discussion will revolve around Brett Stewart's availability for Friday's NRL clash, Penrith backrower Trent Waterhouse is more concerned about stopping Manly's imposing forward pack.
The Sea Eagles have surprised critics with their sprightly start to the season and Waterhouse believes much of their success is centred around their physical forwards.

Led by Anthony Watmough, who averages 150 metres per game, the Sea Eagles forwards have helped turn Manly into the third most productive metre-earners in the competition.

Their 1,367 metres per game are behind only St George Illawarra (1,453) and Melbourne (1,381).

So while most pundits are curious as to whether fullback Stewart has recovered from a persistent hamstring injury, Waterhouse is more worried about the bruising night he is in for personally at Brookvale Oval.

"They've got a quality pack and they've got some big guns there too," he explained.

"Choc Watmough is playing out of his skin ... they're pretty solid all over the park and it's going to be a tough one.

"(Backrower Joe Galuvao) is been playing some great footy. Hopefully I can get out there and get stuck into him."

Penrith have eased into some form of their own in recent weeks, crushing Canberra 36-10 a fortnight ago to go with solid showings in losses to pacesetters Brisbane and Melbourne.

And Waterhouse believes last weekend's 25-10 defeat to Melbourne Storm is the ideal way to prepare for a match with the similarly methodical Sea Eagles.

"We were in that (Melbourne) game for most of it but (we had) just a few little errors and a few lapses in concentration and they got us," he said.

"And that's what good teams do, so hopefully we'll learn from that.

"Our last three weeks we've only won one game but we've had some promising signs and hopefully we can rip it up a notch and get a win (on Friday night).

"It is a massive game for us, we don't want to fall too far behind after a pretty sluggish start to the year.

"It's a big game for us and hopefully we show up and have a big one.

"It's been a short week and we've only had one session so we've worked on our attack pretty much because we've been a bit lacklustre there, that's been our main focus.

"It's early days and there's a long way to go but hopefully we're heading in the right direction."

By Joe Barton
AAP
April 21, 2011 6:04PM

eagles2win said the following on Thu Apr 21 22:45 2011

While many are looking forward to this weekends game I can't wait until we meet the Dragons

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