There was a touch of Cameron Smith about young Brisbane hooker Andrew McCullough's game which set Brisbane on the road to a 46-16 NRL drubbing of Cronulla on Friday night.

A week after watching Smith, the world's best No.9, orchestrate a ruthless 26-6 defeat of the Broncos, McCullough replicated the performance with his own clinical opening 40 minutes which had Brisbane's forwards rolling over the top of a tough Sharks pack.

Brisbane coach Anthony Griffin has been working with McCullough on his confidence and the rewards were apparent against the Sharks with almost 80 touches, 15 runs, four tackle breaks and 42 tackles in just over an hour of action before Ben Hunt finished off the job at dummy half.

They were Smithesque-like numbers which repeatedly carried Brisbane's forwards across the advantage line, creating time and space for Darren Lockyer and Peter Wallace to operate on their attacking sides of the field.

McCulloch's career took a dip last month when when he was sent back to the Queensland Cup along with Hunt after they were both charged with public nuisance during a night of drinking.

McCullough's form had been down at the time and the embarrassing incident along with being dropped was, in his own words, a "kick in the bum".

"He wasn't playing well before that and sometimes it can take a setback like that," said Griffin.

"He's been building nicely the last three or four weeks and I thought he was terrific against Melbourne last week.

"He was a real focus of our attack tonight early the way he got our forwards over the advantage line to allow Locky and Wal to sit back and pick their times when to come in.

"He's really hitting his straps and Ben Hunt was great too when he got on, particularly his defence in the ruck where he cleaned up a lot of stuff for us."

McCullough said nobody was a harder critic than himself.

"Hook (Griffin) has been working hard with me and I guess it's not a bad time of the yearto start getting it right," said McCullough, who was slick and positive out of dummy-half working both sides of the field. .

However the young hooker handed most of the credit blokes like Benny Hannant, Scott Anderson and Corey Parker, who did the hard work.

Hannant smashed out 168 metres while Parker wasn't far behind with 163m to go with 35 tackles and seven goals in another impressive 70 minutes.

"(Justin) Hodges scored the tries out wide but it goes back to the dominant display by Benny taking hit-ups off the second ruck and Corey, who keeps putting their hand up for runs.

"You look at all the good teams; the reason they go so well is because the front-rowers and back-rowers make those hard metres for the faster players out wide.

"Hodgo's had a rough couple of years so it's great to see him back and playing with his old confidence again at the right time of the year."

Brisbane will hang onto fourth place unless North Queensland beat Penrith by nine points or more at Dairy Farmers Stadium on Saturday.

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