He watched as his side almost squandered a 30-0 lead to win by one point against North Queensland on Friday night. Scoring sprees have been an unnatural constant in this year's playoffs.  Only Canterbury's elimination final win over Melbourne missed each team putting on a run of points.

A host of new rules designed to speed up play and grant teams better attacking opportunities were brought into the NRL this season. Teams are given seven tackles from 20 metre restarts, quick taps are generally back in vogue, a handover is awarded from a kick out on the full while 40/20 restarts are also taps instead of scrums.

Robinson said the changing rules had resulted in monumental momentum shifts. "You've got to think about it because it has happened in a lot of games this year," he said. "The attacking advantage that's happened in the rule changes this year and some tweaks to that, has given room for larger momentum changes.

"So as soon as a team gets an advantage, they've got better advantage through refereeing interpretations and some rules. It's hard for a team to right that when they're under pressure, especially under pressure of this time of the season."

The Roosters rushed to 30 points in as many minutes against the Cowboys while Canterbury went close to repeating that, scoring 16 points in 18 minutes to open their game against Manly a day later. The Cowboys responded with 30 unanswered points in 20 minutes while the Sea Eagles scored 16 points of their own to stage an unlikely comeback.

Robinson also said star players on show during this time of year contributed momentum shifts after Johnathan Thurston inspired a Cowboys outfit. "And then I think it's down to some quality players," Robinson said. "We had a fairly good player in the opposition wing that game for them and we couldn't hold him. But I'd like to think it's a lot more in the attacking hands than what it has been in the defensive hands."

Canterbury coach Des Hasler backed Robinson's stance on big name players leaving their mark at the business end of the season. "We've got some very skilful players playing the game," Hasler said. "Sometimes you miss a kick or you miss a particular player, or you miss a particular tackle, so in all those games, particularly the Roosters-Cowboys one, there's some incredible moments where the players have just seized that time and it turned into points. And you put a number of those moments together and it turns into a great game of footy."

Meanwhile, Robinson's adversary Michael Maguire backed his team to overcome any mental anguish associated with being bundled out of the corresponding matches in the past two years. Maguire said his Rabbitohs were under no illusions about the challenge of facing the premiers.

"Every team feels expectation when you're playing in this arena, so it's no different to the four [finals teams]," Maguire said. "We've all got the same expectation of going into the game that we've been working hard for all year. We understand that we're playing against a team that won the grand final last year and two minor premierships, and they got quality across the park. For us, our expectation is to work really hard for each other and play to the potential we can."