Lote Tuqiri admits his amazing tryscoring drought has reached "unbelievable" proportions and the NSW Waratahs winger has promised to do all he can to cross the line in Saturday night's Super 14 grudge match with Queensland.

Disturbingly for Waratahs and Wallabies fans, Tuqiri - the highest-paid player in Australian rugby - hasn't scored a try in 17 matches.

The six-million-dollar man bagged a double in Australia's Bledisloe Cup loss to New Zealand in Auckland last August but has since failed to find the line on either the Wallabies' four-Test tour of Europe in November or for the Waratahs during their disastrous 2007 campaign.

In fact at Super 14 level, Tuqiri hasn't touched down since round 12 last year against the Chiefs.

"It's unbelievable," Tuqiri said at the Waratahs' pre-game captain's run.

"I don't think I've ever gone this long without a try."

It's official - he hasn't, and the 27-year-old dual international concedes he needs to do something about it as the second-last-placed 'Tahs desperately try to stave off the bottom-placed Reds.

"I've just got to back myself rather than waiting for someone else to put me in a gap," Tuqiri said.

"I probably should have put my foot down instead of passing to Peter Hewat when I got that intercept against the Crusaders in the first half (two weeks ago).

"We're making enough line breaks to score tries but not finishing them off and that's what's been our problem this year."

With more than 125 years of rivalry between the two states only adding to the stakes at Aussie Stadium, Tuqiri said there was "no greater stage" to break the drought.

"They're normally tight games and so to score one in a tight game is always good and especially against the Reds would be even better," he said.

Tuqiri said it would have been unfathomable at the start of the season to think the NSW-Queensland showdown would be reduced to a battle to avoid the dreaded wooden spoon.

"This time six months ago it was obviously one of the marquee match-ups," he said. "It is every year when you when you're sussing the calendar out.

"Obviously you wouldn't have thought we'd be playing for the spoon. But that's the way it is. We've both put ourselves in this position and we don't want to end up with it in three or four weeks' time."

But the spoon is precisely what the Waratahs will get if they continue producing the same "absolute tripe"- as Tuqiri put it - they dished up in last week's 36-10 loss to the Brumbies.

"We can't let that happen again and we've just got to start going out and putting it on the field rather than talking it up and not producing," he said.

"There's still a lot to play for this season. With a few bonus points, we can finish a bit higher on the ladder and probably knock a few teams out of the semis and, more than anything else, be a bit of a menace.

"We can gain a bit of respectability and we're playing for national duties as well. This is a big game."

Reds coach Eddie Jones said regardless of the two teams' positions on the table, the fact Queenslanders hated NSW and that New South Welshmen similarly despised Queenslanders would ensure another intense interstate battle.

"At the end of the day, both sides are going to be pretty passionate about it and both sides are going to get stuck in," Jones said.

"But it's the side that plays with the control that is going to win the game."

The Reds received a boost late on Friday when matchwinning winger Andrew Walker passed a fitness test and was declared fit to play after being in doubt with sore ribs.

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