PROVING that a year-old wound is yet to to heal, Manly second-rower Anthony Watmough has admitted that he and his teammates were overawed in last year's grand final, but warned Melbourne that history won't repeat.

Showing remarkable honesty ahead of a repeat of last season's match-up, which the Storm won 34-8, Watmough claimed his side was ambushed at the then Telstra Stadium.

"We didn't know what to expect last year," he said. "A lot of boys hadn't even played semi-final footy before.

"But we won't get overawed again. We know what to expect. The ambush is not going to come. I don't know whether it was stage fright or not, but you've got to hit another level."

Watmough personified the Sea Eagles' failure to aim up last year. His performance cost him a Test jumper.

Sometimes this season he has seemed to struggle with the weight of that capitulation on his square shoulders, even if his run to the finish line has been strong. "You just wipe them ones from the memory, but you use the experience," he said. "I definitely won't be overawed like I was last year.

"They just ran at me all game, and I didn't handle it very well. I didn't know what to expect and they just stuck it to me. But the more they run at me, the more Glenn Stewart's going to be fitter and stronger - he can do some damage."

Watmough said he had not watched a replay of last year's game, but might this week.

"Maybe I will - a bit of motivation," he said. "But the important thing is to watch the way they've been playing this year. Last year was last year. We've just got to erase that."

It's harder than you think. Fullback Brett Stewart can still feel the pain even if his memory of the game is decidedly sketchy, after being knocked out by Melbourne's Michael Crocker in the match-turning moment of the '07 decider.

"There's still a bit of fire burning in the stomach," Stewart said. "It'll be pretty hard to say that it won't be extra motivation … Melbourne were better than us. But we're more confident and more experienced this year. Once you've been through it, you know what to expect.

"Whether it was Melbourne or another team [to be faced in the grand final], we worked really hard from last December to where we are now. We wanted to beat whoever was in front of us, no matter who."

Asked if he believed the long-held mantra that a side has to lose a grand final to win one, Stewart said: "I didn't really but I hope it's true."