NRL: Fear of losing drives Lockyer in sudden-death

Darren Lockyer of the Broncos passes the ball. Photo / Getty Images

The fear of losing rather than trepidation going up against mentor and former coach Wayne Bennett will drive retiring Brisbane captain Darren Lockyer in Saturday night's NRL semi-final against St George Illawarra.

In a sudden-death showdown of Hollywood proportions, the two men whose careers were for so long intertwined will be on opposite sides - Lockyer leading his youthful side onto a packed Suncorp Stadium for the final time and Bennett up in the coach's box plotting his downfall.

But as he approaches the end of his glittering career, the fear of failure rather than one last joust with Bennett dominate his thoughts.

"Every time I go to a game I always have that fear of losing or a sense of failure," Lockyer told AAP.

"You always have that fear of losing but you always have that confidence of winning.

"You never want to come off the field thinking you could have done more or given more."

While he accepts his amazingly successful ride in rugby league could come to an end on Saturday, Lockyer wasn't allowing the emotion of the occasion to detract from his focus.

"I'm sure there'll be moments ... where I'll be thinking about how it might be if we don't get the performance we need," he said.

"But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

"Hopefully that's still a few weeks away."

Masterminding Lockyer's demise is not a scenario Bennett is looking forward to, but Dragons hooker Nathan Fien said he hadn't noticed anything different in the veteran coach's preparation.

Bennett has enough on his plate trying to get his side back on track following Friday night's disappointing qualifying final loss to Wests Tigers.

"It's business as usual for Wayne," Fien said.

"The way we trained this morning he's definitely focused on his job this week and he's riding us really hard.

"For us, we can't get caught up in all that stuff, sure it's a knockout semi-final but we've got to get on with out own jobs."

" ... it could be Darren's last game, it could be our last game - we're just focused on what we have to do as the Dragons to turn our performance from Friday night around."

While the Dragons have a wealth of experienced players Bennett can turn to as he attempts to turn things around, Lockyer claimed the performance of the Broncos' host of finals rookies had given him confidence they would not be overawed by Saturday night's big occasion.

Without injured fullback Josh Hoffman and suspended forward leader Sam Thaiday, who will miss the clash with the Dragons, Brisbane fielded eight players who had not played in an NRL final against the Warriors last weekend.

"Those young guys have been fantastic," Lockyer said.

"What I found really positive was even after this disappointment of Josh's injury and Sam's suspension we just got on with the job.

"There wasn't this white elephant in the room.

"The boys were just enjoying what they were doing and I'm sure they'll enjoy the preparation going into this game.

"It's now do or die, there's no tomorrow.

"If you don't back up your performances, it could all end very quickly".

- AAP