to \u201crun at\u201d in the decider<\/a> at Accor Stadium declaring \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of people I don\u2019t like in this team\u201d. <\/p>\nRather than be worried about Utoikamanu\u2019s comments, Haas said the Broncos were only concerned about themselves and their grand final preparations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can say what they want, but we\u2019ll be out there on Sunday, and we\u2019ll see if that\u2019s still going to be thrown around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know who we are. They got this certain image of us down there, so it is what it is. We\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Broncos qualified for their second grand final in three years with a thrilling 16-14 weekend win over Penrith at Suncorp Stadium, with the victory ending the Panthers\u2019 hopes of five successive premierships.<\/p>\n
Haas will welcome the return of fellow star forward Pat Carrigan for the grand final after he missed the preliminary final win through suspension.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you bring someone like Patty into the team it gives you lots of confidence and belief,\u201d Haas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s rested for about three weeks now, so he\u2019ll be ready to go and can\u2019t wait to play. I know he\u2019ll do a job for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haas said he wanted to enjoy grand final week more than he did in the build-up to the 2023 decider, which Broncos lost to 26-24 to Penrith after seemingly having the game sealed when they led the Panthers 24-8 with less than 20 minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like there were a lot of us who probably got caught up in it a bit, but we\u2019ve learned our lessons now, and just really excited for the weekend,\u201d he said before adding that he wasn\u2019t thinking about what happened two years ago in the grand final.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re new team now, and we\u2019re just focusing on the present, and focusing on our own preparation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Broncos beat the Storm 30-14 when the teams met earlier this month in the final round of the regular season.<\/p>\n
However, Haas said the Broncos would not read too much into that win because it was against a Melbourne team missing star hooker Harry Grant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have great battles, and they\u2019re always up for this game, and we too. We love (playing against) them, and the rivalry we have. It\u2019s a great challenge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Originally published as NRL war of words erupts as Broncos star Payne Haas fires back at \u2018stuck up\u2019 swipe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brisbane enforcer Payne Haas doesn\u2019t care that Melbourne prop Stefano Utoikamanu thinks the Broncos are \u201cstuck up\u201d but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,115066,11288,115064,1203,761,762,43961,158,26598,13390,19095,102468,115067,85,115065],"class_list":["post-177950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-broncos-end-panthers","tag-grand-final","tag-grand-final-preparations","tag-nathan-cleary","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-newswire-sport","tag-nrl","tag-pat-carrigan","tag-payne-haas","tag-preliminary-final","tag-preliminary-final-win","tag-representative-front-rower","tag-sports","tag-weekend-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177950","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=177950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}