The Papua New Guinea Hunters are braced for a home-town backlash in Friday afternoon's Queensland Cup clash against the Burleigh Bears on the Gold Coast.
The Hunters moved up to fourth on the competition with a 16-4 win over Sunshine Coast last week while Burleigh's two-match winning streak was halted in a 48-20 mauling by the Easts Tigers.
Strength and Conditioning coach Jason Tassell says they're going in with their ears and eyes wide open.
"No one likes to be beaten by that much as they were last week by Easts so we'd expect they would have trained hard, they would have got a fair bit of a dressing down by the coach. They're doing the same thing - I think they've got a short turnaround as well - so they will be in the same boat as us. We are expecting a pretty physical encounter and that they will be fired up to try and rub that last week out of their memory."
Jason Tassell says the Hunters squad are also benefitting from spending the past few days on the Gold Coast.
All of our games whether we come to Australia or whether we're in PNG are away games, because we have to travel to our home games in Kokopo so we lose days every week in that. We decided this being a short turnaround we'd lose two days in travel and with their only being four days it between playing it only gives two days preparation so it's just wise for us to stay down for this one."
The Hunters have made just one change for today's game with Edward Goma replacing suspended prop Timothy Lomai.
Dion Aiye entered an early guilty plea for a separate dangerous tackle charge and is free to play.
