A leaky defence is all that stands between a mental edge or defeat for Australia in Saturday night's Four Nations final dress rehearsal against New Zealand.

Australian centre Brent Tate believes the winner of the dead rubber in Auckland would earn a huge psychological advantage going into the tournament final at Suncorp Stadium on November 13.

"Both teams will want to win on Saturday night ... I think it will definitely give the winner an edge (in the final)," he told AAP.

"You always want to be winning going into finals matches and psychologically it's a huge advantage."

Australian coach Tim Sheens blasted his charges' second half performance in last Sunday's 34-14 victory over England, claiming the Kiwis would be encouraged by Australia's patchy ruck defence.

Tate concedes the Australians let themselves down with sloppy handling and porous defence last weekend, but backed them to bounce back from the criticism.

"I think it's just a general thing of tightening everything up," he said.

"I think we dropped too much ball the other night, and defensively we were a little bit too loose as well.

"Sometimes it doesn't take too much to sharpen those things up so hopefully come Saturday night we can put a really good performance together.

"But we've got a lot of classy players in our side and a lot of big game players to help us do it."

Tate added the Kangaroos will need to keep a close eye on playmaker Benji Marshall, with the Kiwi star able to punish teams who take their foot off the gas.

"They are a dangerous team if you give them any space, especially with a guy like Benji dictating terms the way he has been," he said.

"They've got plenty of strike players out there and the challenge there for us now is to do our best and try and stop that."

Marshall's West Tigers teammate Lote Tuqiri knows the Kiwi superstar's game better than most, but even he was struggling to come up with a plan to stop reduce his impact.

"I guess it would be easier, but you never know with Benji, he's an unpredictable player," Tuqiri told AAP.

"And you can't really let your foot off what you're trying to do and relax because that's the time he'll pounce.

"Obviously our defence was pretty ordinary last week, and in cases where they did score a few tries we let ourselves down in the communication and I guess reading the defence so that's something we'll work on this week."

Tuqiri, having played at Eden Park during his rugby union days with the Wallabies and NSW Waratahs, is the sole Kangaroo with any experience of what to expect from a crowd at the venue - and he has a warning for his teammates.

"It won't be a warm (reception) ... there's a fierce rivalry between New Zealand and Australia and I think that will be shown on the weekend," he said.

"We get on well off the field but when we go on those battlelines are drawn and even with the fans they sort of get into you a fair bit too."

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