Trying to subdue the superstar she was signed to replace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is the challenge confronting Botille Vette-Welsh and the Knights when they face four-time premiership-winner Tamika Upton and the Broncos in the NRLW preliminary final at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And Vette-Welsh cannot wait.<\/p>\n
After missing the final round of the season due to concussion, Vette-Welsh played a significant role in Newcastle\u2019s 34-20 victory over Gold Coast at McDonald Jones Stadium to help the Knights reach a fourth straight grand final qualifier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Standing in their way will be Upton, Brisbane\u2019s talismanic co-captain, who wore the No.1 jersey in Newcastle\u2019s past three preliminary finals and was the Karyn Murphy Medalist in the Knights\u2019 2022 and 2023 grand final victories.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019Meeks\u2019 is \u2018the man\u2019 and has been \u2018the man\u2019 at the back for many, many years,\u201d Vette-Welsh told NRL.com after the win against the Titans.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd yeah, I think she\u2019s the pinnacle of a fullback, and every one of us should be looking at her to improve our game and be at the same standard as her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have the same strengths as her and I\u2019ve got to use what I do have to my advantage and be able to do my job for the girls on the weekend, and that\u2019s all I have to focus on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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I mean, I can look on and be in awe of the things that she\u2019s been doing this season but once I\u2019m on the field and I\u2019m going up against her, none of that matters<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf you want to be the best, you\u2019ve got to go up against the best and challenge yourself. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get nowhere being comfortable or being complacent, so someone like her, she will bring the best out of not just me in my position, but everyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vette-Welsh is in the first season of a three-year deal she signed last December shortly after Upton was granted leave on compassionate grounds to return home to Queensland, despite having three years left on her contract with the Knights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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NRLW Best Moments – Finals Week 1<\/p>\n
Rockhampton-born Upton, who won back-to-back premierships with Brisbane in 2019 and 2020 before doing likewise with Newcastle, subsequently signed a three-year contract to rejoin the Broncos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That left the Knights in the market for an elite custodian and coach Ben Jeffries targeted Vette-Welsh, the New Zealand-born NSW and Australian representative whose NRLW career has comprised stints at the Roosters, Dragons, Eels and Wests Tigers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll forever be grateful for being able to pull on a Knights jersey, and obviously grateful to \u2018BJ\u2019 and the Newcastle Knights for giving me an opportunity to come up here,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got some great players here and to be amongst them and be on the same team with them has been awesome.<\/p>\n
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Upton at it again<\/p>\n
\u201cI love being an underdog, and I don\u2019t have to always play on the flashest or the best team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about enjoying my footy and growing my footy, and I feel like I have been able to grow a lot since I\u2019ve been up here, and I\u2019ve kind of had to raise my standards because everyone around me are guns.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vette-Welsh said the Knights respected but did not fear the Broncos, who will start as firm favourites on Sunday in front of a likely sold-out home crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Knights v Titans\u00a0\u2013 Finals Week 1, 2025<\/p>\n
Brisbane and the unbeaten Roosters have been the NRLW\u2019s benchmark teams all season but Vette-Welsh believes Newcastle\u2019s best is good enough to beat any opponent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne hundred per cent, as soon as you get into finals footy, everything that\u2019s happened earlier on in the year doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou come into these spaces and it\u2019s a whole new ball game. So yep, we are the underdogs, and the Broncos have been very dominant, along with the Roosters, but that doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re any better than what we can deliver on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we play a good 70-minute game and we\u2019re disciplined and complete our sets and hold the ball, we\u2019ll be sweet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Leading 24-0 early in the second half against the Titans last Saturday, the Knights were on track for their most complete performance this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Botille Vette-Welsh Try<\/p>\n
But, as they have done too often during the season, they allowed the Titans back into the game, and Vette-Welsh said they could not afford a similar letdown against Brisbane.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve had that in our game all season, where we just almost switch off for a point in time in the game and the other team gets a bit of momentum and we can\u2019t seem to switch it, and that\u2019s been our biggest challenge since going down to the Sharks,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have so much greatness in us, we just need to be able to play for 70 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat first 35, that first half was outstanding. Completions were high, we were just playing simple, basic footy, getting to our kicks, then having a crack at those kicks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo simple footy is what works for us, but it\u2019s just a little bit of brain fog that gets us in a little bit of a rut and we spend half the time trying to dig ourselves out of a hole instead of resetting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Broncos are an outstanding team. They\u2019ve got some great guns in their team, and no team can afford to have that stutter against any team \u2013 especially the Broncos.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trying to subdue the superstar she was signed to replace.\u00a0 That is the challenge confronting Botille Vette-Welsh and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-168961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}