10/06 — Before our quadrennial Jets-Giants rivalry gets renewed tomorrow at the Giants' home stadium, we bring you two more views on the matchup from the Green & White locker room.

You'd think that a guy like FB Darian Barnes, who grew up in Toms River at the Jersey shore, would have a favorite team from among the Jets and Giants, or even might have felt the pull of the Eagles from the southwest. And Barnes acknowledged that he was aware of all those teams. But others also influenced his football development.

"It's funny, but I didn't like any Northeast team," Barnes said. "But I kind of liked Roger Craig, so I was a 49ers guys. When I was growing up, the West Coast offense was the thing. I did like watching the Giants' Rodney Hampton, though."

But not so much that he remembers being a big fan of Hampton's Big Blue teammates. Conversely, he said he's not pumped up as a first-year Jet and a stick-it-to-'em fullback to pound the Giants a little harder for those proverbial braggin' rights that go all the way back to Weeb Ewbank.

"I couldn't care less about that," Barnes said. "This game is like any other game. Jersey or not, I'm just going to go out there and play."

Then there's Ben Graham, the Australian punter who could be excused for not having heard about the Jets or Giants as he matured. But Graham does have an interesting take on this rivalry talk for teams that share the Meadowlands but are allowed to meet so infrequently in the regular season.

"People can’t believe, especially in Australia, that we only play each other every four years — they can’t believe it," Graham told John Beattie, who produced the interesting article that went up on newyorkjets.com early this morning about Graham's Geelong Cats powering to the Australian Football League championship.

"They don’t even know we play in the same stadium, but the fact that we play them once every four years is huge. Not only do you play once a year, you’re two New York teams, tickets have been at a premium.

"Whether it’s a rivalry or not," Graham said, "I don’t think the players approach the game any different. Its more of a fans' rivalry mentality, which is fine. But rivalries, in my mind or my experience, don’t come from playing each other once every four years. They come from playing each other a lot in big games when the stakes are high — similar, I guess, to the Jets and the Patriots."