Sydney Roosters coach Trent Robinson is confident key men Luke Keary (food poisoning) and Daniel Tupou (groin injury) will be fine to face the Cowboys in Saturday night's grand final qualifier despite limited preparation for each player.
Five-eighth Keary had not trained all week until a light session at the captain's run on Friday morning, while Tupou played less than 10 minutes in a win over Brisbane a fortnight ago and looked hobbled in that short spell.
"[Keary] is pretty good," Robinson said on Friday.
"He's good enough. He missed up until today but he moved well enough today. We don't go overboard today but he was good."
Given the amount of time Keary has had alongside halfback Mitch Pearce this year, one week of reduced preparation should not be a major factor, Robinson added.
"We joke that he's played every minute except for nine minutes where he got sent to the bin against Cronulla," he said.
"His combination, they know each other well now, they've played enough time together but it's always good to get a bit of fluency together before you run out."
Robinson said Tupou was "flying" despite barely running for a week after the Brisbane game.
"He'll be playing, Toops," Robinson said.
"That groin, I think you could see last week [against Brisbane in week one of the finals] I think you could see it wasn't… it was good but it wasn't quite 100 per cent.
"I think he tore some scar tissue then finished the game. He was pretty light last week but he's been flying this week so he's good to go."
As for the Cowboys' left-field team sheet on Tuesday which featured Kangaroos prop Matt Scott in the reserves for the first time since he tore an ACL in March, Robinson said it wouldn't change the Roosters' preparation.
"It's sort of seven months after the injury, players do play from about five months on," Robinson said.
"Doctors take it a bit longer these days for ACL repairs. I'm sure [Kangaroos coach] Mal [Meninga] is happy that he'll be ready for the World Cup as well now that he's been named. He's a very important player for the Cowboys, Australian player. It's a big inclusion for them.
"Either he's in and we deal with it, we know what he does, we know how good he is so we go out there and play how we want to play and we deal with Matt Scott and if he doesn't then he doesn't play. If you waste too much energy on that it doesn't count.
"I'm sure they've worked him hard enough, I'm sure he's been training very hard for a long time but there's a part of the mental game that goes into it as well. If he's going to play he'll be ready."
Another player the Roosters won't be basing their game plan around is wrecking ball Jason Taumalolo who, along with Cowboys half Michael Morgan, has been arguably the player of the 2017 finals so far.
"To be honest [we haven't put] that much [focus on Taumalolo]," Robinson said.
"He's an incredible player, we all know that but if you narrow your focus in this game you're going to get hit... they've got experience all over the park and if you narrow your focus too much you can take your eye off who's actually going to make a difference in the game.
"Do we have to control him? Big time, he's a top line player. But if you just have one narrow focus you can get in trouble."
