Parramatta backrower Ben Smith had a simple goal at the start of the year - to play a full season in the NRL.

While that would not seem much of an aim for a player entering his sixth year in the top grade, it is for someone who was set to give the game away after a debilitating knee injury limited him to just two matches in 2008.

To be 80 minutes away from possibly picking up a premiership medal was not even a consideration.

"My knee just wouldn't get better," Smith said ahead of Sunday's grand final against Melbourne.

"Nothing we'd done during the year (2008) was working.

"It just got to the stage where I wasn't going to put myself through the torture and I'm not going to put the club through the torture - I'd missed a whole year and I didn't want to go through that again."

Club medicos finally found the cause of Smith's pain, with his femur and tibia bones left bruised as a result of the 24-year-old trying to come back from successive arthroscope operations.

Continued therapy got him back on the park for the opening round of the season, but it wasn't long before Smith's pre-season goal went up in smoke.

The knee was giving him grief and Smith was finding the shift from the centres to the backrow harder than he thought.

After ten rounds coach Daniel Anderson dumped him to the NSW Cup.

That Smith was also an outspoken critic of Anderson's decision to drive good halfback Brett Finch out of the club didn't help matters.

"It was very disappointing to go where I was ... I was just down on confidence with my knee and the way I was playing, Smith said.

"I look back on it now as maybe those four or five weeks when I went back (to the NSW CUP), it gave me an opportunity to work on my knees.

"When I came back, I felt a lot more comfortable on my feet and the way I could move laterally."

Anderson said it was no coincidence Smith's return to the top grade came at the same time as Parramatta's late-season charge began.

Initially a reluctant forward, Smith made massive improvements in his workrate and positioning and, along with centre Joel Reddy, will be looked upon to do a defensive job on Storm centre Greg Inglis on Sunday.

"I'd never played backrow in my life - I'd always been a back," Smith said.

"The first few weeks I probably wasn't that comfortable.

"It took a lot longer than I expected to get used to the position."

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