Subduing a superstar: Bo's up for the 'man' sized challenge

Trying to subdue the superstar she was signed to replace. 

That is the challenge confronting Botille Vette-Welsh and the Knights when they face four-time premiership-winner Tamika Upton and the Broncos in the NRLW preliminary final at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday. 

And Vette-Welsh cannot wait.

After missing the final round of the season due to concussion, Vette-Welsh played a significant role in Newcastle’s 34-20 victory over Gold Coast at McDonald Jones Stadium to help the Knights reach a fourth straight grand final qualifier. 

Standing in their way will be Upton, Brisbane’s talismanic co-captain, who wore the No.1 jersey in Newcastle’s past three preliminary finals and was the Karyn Murphy Medalist in the Knights’ 2022 and 2023 grand final victories.

“’Meeks’ is ‘the man’ and has been ‘the man’ at the back for many, many years,” Vette-Welsh told 820517.com after the win against the Titans.

“And yeah, I think she’s the pinnacle of a fullback, and every one of us should be looking at her to improve our game and be at the same standard as her. 

“I don’t have the same strengths as her and I’ve got to use what I do have to my advantage and be able to do my job for the girls on the weekend, and that’s all I have to focus on. 

I mean, I can look on and be in awe of the things that she’s been doing this season but once I’m on the field and I’m going up against her, none of that matters

“If you want to be the best, you’ve got to go up against the best and challenge yourself.  

“You get nowhere being comfortable or being complacent, so someone like her, she will bring the best out of not just me in my position, but everyone.” 

Vette-Welsh is in the first season of a three-year deal she signed last December shortly after Upton was granted leave on compassionate grounds to return home to Queensland, despite having three years left on her contract with the Knights. 

Rockhampton-born Upton, who won back-to-back premierships with Brisbane in 2019 and 2020 before doing likewise with Newcastle, subsequently signed a three-year contract to rejoin the Broncos. 

That left the Knights in the market for an elite custodian and coach Ben Jeffries targeted Vette-Welsh, the New Zealand-born NSW and Australian representative whose NRLW career has comprised stints at the Roosters, Dragons, Eels and Wests Tigers. 

“I’ll forever be grateful for being able to pull on a Knights jersey, and obviously grateful to ‘BJ’ and the Newcastle Knights for giving me an opportunity to come up here,” she said. 

“They’ve got some great players here and to be amongst them and be on the same team with them has been awesome.

“I love being an underdog, and I don’t have to always play on the flashest or the best team. 

“It’s all about enjoying my footy and growing my footy, and I feel like I have been able to grow a lot since I’ve been up here, and I’ve kind of had to raise my standards because everyone around me are guns.” 

Vette-Welsh said the Knights respected but did not fear the Broncos, who will start as firm favourites on Sunday in front of a likely sold-out home crowd. 

Brisbane and the unbeaten Roosters have been the NRLW’s benchmark teams all season but Vette-Welsh believes Newcastle’s best is good enough to beat any opponent. 

“One hundred per cent, as soon as you get into finals footy, everything that’s happened earlier on in the year doesn’t matter,” she said. 

“You come into these spaces and it’s a whole new ball game. So yep, we are the underdogs, and the Broncos have been very dominant, along with the Roosters, but that doesn’t mean that they’re any better than what we can deliver on. 

“If we play a good 70-minute game and we’re disciplined and complete our sets and hold the ball, we’ll be sweet.” 

Leading 24-0 early in the second half against the Titans last Saturday, the Knights were on track for their most complete performance this year. 

But, as they have done too often during the season, they allowed the Titans back into the game, and Vette-Welsh said they could not afford a similar letdown against Brisbane. 

“I think we’ve had that in our game all season, where we just almost switch off for a point in time in the game and the other team gets a bit of momentum and we can’t seem to switch it, and that’s been our biggest challenge since going down to the Sharks,” she said. 

“I think we have so much greatness in us, we just need to be able to play for 70 minutes. 

“That first 35, that first half was outstanding. Completions were high, we were just playing simple, basic footy, getting to our kicks, then having a crack at those kicks. 

“So simple footy is what works for us, but it’s just a little bit of brain fog that gets us in a little bit of a rut and we spend half the time trying to dig ourselves out of a hole instead of resetting. 

“The Broncos are an outstanding team. They’ve got some great guns in their team, and no team can afford to have that stutter against any team – especially the Broncos.”