Cowboys coach Paul Green is well aware that stopping red-hot Rooster Latrell Mitchell is a massive task and he has identified 19-year-old Enari Tuala as the man for the job at Allianz Stadium on Saturday night.
Still buzzing from winning the Origin series with NSW, Mitchell has been in devastating form in the past fortnight and his three-try haul against the Dragons was all class.
"Latrell's in great from. He's coming off that Origin series now, he's probably recovered from that and that's probably given him a bit of confidence," Green said.
"It's a great challenge for Enari. It's a young edge down there for us so they've got to see it as a challenge.
"Latrell's not that much older than our guys o it shouldn't be an age thing but they've got to look at it as a challenge."
Tuala is 10 games into his NRL career and has already confronted one of the game's finest centres, Greg Inglis, and held his own.
"Enari did a good job on Inglis [in round 11] and he's one of the best centres in the competition.
"Enari has come up to the mark when we've asked him."
That's exactly what the entire Cowboys side will need to do on Saturday if they are to spring an upset and move further away from the dreaded wooden spoon.
Confidence shouldn't be an issue for Green's men after the come-from-behind win over Newcastle last Friday - just their fifth victory of the season.
"We need to build on the things we did well last week and look for a little bit of improvement, hopefully the combinations are a little bit better," Green said.
"I think we should have a bit of confidence defensively and that's certainly an area we need to be good in to play the Roosters. They're a pretty physical side that runs hard so we're going to have to tackle well.
"It's about taking the confidence out of that second half [against Newcastle], particularly in defence. I think we showed some good resiliency which we lacked in the first half of the Knights game, so it's important that we hang on to that."
