“You have a style of play. And when we play at our best, we honour that. We need to hold that intensity about us and we have the players that enjoy playing at that level.

“Jared idles high when it comes to his intensity, so it’s more about himself than it is any opposition. We just want him to play how he plays, along with the whole forward pack. We want him to set the tone, like front-rowers should do. And then for the whole pack to do that as well.”

Storm coach Craig Bellamy would not be drawn on the heavyweight match-up, insisting Asofa-Solomona need only “play his game”, and dead-batting several questions on Waerea-Hargreaves’ influence.

With Super League beckoning for Waerea-Hargreaves next season, both he and Victor Radley, who returned from a fractured scapula, proved critical in a dominant win over Manly last week.

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Radley began preparations for Friday’s Melbourne trip declaring “you’ve got to be violent, you’ve got to be physical” to beat the Storm.

Robinson said the “madness” of Radley and Waerea-Hargreaves holds a special place in his heart – just not necessarily when he’s watching it play out in real time, when the threat of penalties and sin-bins is all too real.

“Your natural feeling is [that] there’s a real pride in coaching those guys,” Robinson said.

“It’s a real honour, I’ve had that over the years, the honour of coaching guys who are a little bit different. They are the reason we watch our sport. I don’t know if I [appreciate it] when I’m in that game mode but during the week when you think about what men do to play for this team, it’s a real honour to coach that.”

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