TODD, I've got some news for you: it's eight days until the grand final. If you are interviewed fewer than 100 times between now and then, you'll be doing well.

In the bowels of Suncorp Stadium on Friday night after they qualified for the grand final with a 32-6 win over Gold Coast, Sydney Roosters did their best to maintain a visage captain Braith Anasta described as "relaxed and confident".

Anasta himself was putting in the yards, happy to be quizzed by the Milton Monitor if they had a reporter here.

Coach Brian Smith, fresh from telling an off-beat story at the media conference about a mate in jail, was laughing along with everyone from physios to cameramen.

But our Dally M gold medallist, who a year ago was playing a in a bush grand final for Atherton, wasn't exactly in the spirit of things. As he headed for the bus, he dispensed with his sidestep and speed and used the fend on reporters.

It's only fair I point out there were extenuating circumstances.

Firstly, Carney was placed on report for a 37th-minute hit on Gold Coast captain Scott Prince. Through the club PR, he requested he not be asked about it. When a TV crew that missed that instruction asked him, Carney was not best pleased and after answering, declined to be interviewed again.

Secondly, the former Canberra star was himself felled by Prince, and remained a little pale and woozy.

And thirdly, when Carney did speak he was pretty entertaining - saying players "dream" of playing in any grand final, even if it's on X-Box.

"It's fun making grand finals playing touch football," he said. "Even on Sony games ... if you're playing a grand final to win, it's a buzz. It's something you dream about.''

Fair enough. Good quote and thanks. I'm not criticising anything Carney did or didn't do on Friday night.

It's just that even though he has won the Dally M medal, Todd Carney does not have the luxury of being aloof like Jarryd Hayne or Greg Inglis can sometimes be. Not this week.

Rugby league has welcomed him back from the abyss, he is the assigned redemption man until midnight on December 31 and any sulkiness this week will undo much of the goodwill that his built up towards him.

This is a week where he repays everyone else's patience with him. He is the media go-to man, no doubt, eclipsing even Benji Marshall if Wests Tigers make it.

Todd, this week is going to suck for you - but you still don't have enough brownie points to get away with anything but enduring it with good humour.

For coach Smith, it's more a case of miles on the clock than points in the bank. It's his fourth grand final in Australia and when he was asked about this, he came up with a bizarre story.

"I've got a mate who's spending some time inside for an error that he made," Smith said. "I had no idea what to talk to him about the first time I went to visit him.

"All I could come up with was: he told me that he lives for, he works his way through the week, for his kids to come and visit him all weekend.

"That's where I live. It's a horrible cave sometimes. From one week to the next . that's all I do. In the past I've been guilty of starting to let things get ahead of me but I've been living in that one-week little chamber for most of my life.

"It's not a pretty thing to live with if you're a family member or a friend but it's where I live.

"I'll be there this week - and enjoying it''.

Smith's description of life as a coach was quite evocative. The timing, on the other hand, seemed odd.

But if you think deeply about your work and - unlike your job and mine - thousands of other people are fascinated by it, what better time to come out with a powerful metaphor than when you are on the verge of a massive success?

It was his way of expressing emotion, I guess. Coach Smith is, without doubt, as fascinating and inscrutable a person as our game can boast.

His rival on Friday night, John Cartwright, clearly has other words to describe Smith and as is often the case when a coach's guard is forced down in a media conference, it came from a blatant misunderstanding.

Smith had proclaimed: "We probably had a slice of luck tonight so that would make it eight or ten or whatever. We're the luckiest team going. We are so lucky.''

This was a sarcastic reference to a story in the Daily Telegraph pointing out how much good fortune had favoured the tricolours this year - a yarn which the club felt did not give the players due credit.

But one reporter thought Smith had been serious, and put to Cartwright that Smith genuinely thought his side lucky.

"He's playing mind games - he's done it all week, he's done it his whole career," Cartwright snapped. "I don't really care what he thinks, to be honest.''

Ouch. Like I said, it's going to be a long week.