Knights coach Adam O'Brien expects the Titans to put a target on Kalyn Ponga but has dismissed any suggestion they may resort to illegal tactics to test out his shoulder during his comeback game on the Gold Coast today.
Ponga has missed the opening month of the season following shoulder surgery back in October but has returned at an opportune time during the middle of the club's injury crisis.
He will go head-to-head with Titans fullback AJ Brimson, the player who filled his No.1 jersey for Queensland in Origin last season, but according to O'Brien, his fullback won't be under any added pressure to perform despite the quality of Knights players missing.
"I'm excited for KP [Ponga] to return," O'Brien said. "The thing he loves doing is being out there playing footy with his mates and I'm really excited to see him do that again.
"There is not a whole lot of pressure on KP to come back to be the saviour. It's more about us continuing on the spirit we showed last week with everybody, as individuals, getting their job done and letting Kalyn be himself."
Asked about the extra attention he is likely to receive from the Titans, O'Brien said: "He's a pretty cool customer. He understands teams go after him, they like to get stuck into him and as I said last year, he never whinges about it. He's a tough competitor and he'll handle it fine.
"They will go after him and when you are a marquee player in this game, you wear that as a badge of honour. We'll have some plans in place to help KP in that regard but I'm not concerned about anything illegal. I think the officials will take care of anything like that."
Despite missing key players, the Knights will field their strongest starting pack, led up front by in-form props Daniel Saifiti and David Klemmer and hooker Jayden Brailey while new halfback Blake Green will be far better for his 30 minute cameo against the Dragons in his comeback game last week.
If the Knights can lay a decent platform up the middle, the likes of Green, Ponga and new five-eighth Connor Watson have enough attacking strike to cause the home side plenty of problems.
"With Greeny, you could tell after the Dragons game that was a huge confidence boost for him to get through. He's led the team really well [this week]," O'Brien said.
The Titans, who have won their past five games against the Knights on the Gold Coast including last season's embarrassing final round 36-6 thrashing, have been boosted with halves pairing Ash Taylor and Jamal Fogarty both set to play.
