A new attitude and a great beginning for the Roosters
Roar Guru By Alan Nicolea, 15 Mar 2010 Alan Nicolea is a Roar Guru
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This time last year, the Sydney Roosters produced one of the most embarrassing performances in their rich history, falling meekly to rivals the South Sydney Rabbitohs 52-12 at the SFS at the start of the 2009 NRL season.
What a difference 12 months can make.
After a horrendous 2009 season which culminated in the Roosters receiving the wooden spoon for the first time since 1966, the Bondi Junction club went through a massive transition faze which coincidently saw figures Brad Fittler, Craig Fitzgibbon, Willie Mason, Iosia Soliola and Mark O Meley leave the club.
Former Newcastle Knights boss Brian Smith was chosen to replace Fittler as coach, while Todd Carney, Phil Graham, Daniel Conn and Jared Wearea Hargreaves were recruited to help the chooks rebuild from arguably their most disastrous year both on and off the field.
Although some NRL teams predicted the Roosters to be one of the dark horses in season 2010, no one would have thought that last year’s wooden spooners could comprehensively beat a Rabbitohs side many predict to be top four material.
But upsets have been ripe for the picking so far this weekend, and yesterday’s tussle at ANZ stadium saw a revitalised Roosters outfit play some of their most impressive football in years to defeat the Rabbitohs 36-10.
Indeed not many clubs can attest to having so many playmakers in the one side, but the Roosters will no doubt be an exception after Todd Carney, Braith Anasta and Mitchell Pearce shone in unison to provide the chooks with an attacking edge not seen since Brad Fittler was playing for the chooks early in the millennium.
Pearce and Carney seemed to have the football on a string on occasions, provided quality service to a Roosters backline that looked dangerous with the ball in hand.
Whilst Anthony Minichiello and Sam Perrett both produced very solid performances, centre Shaun Kenny Dowall could hardly put a foot wrong in probably his best performance for the tri-colours.
The Kiwi Test player scored two tries, including a dazzling four pointer which saw him leave Rabbitohs players Rhys Wesser, Fetuli Talanoa and Colin Best in his wake while sprinting near the touchline in the second half.
Although he was solid on the wing last year, Kenn Dowall’s performance against the Rabbitohs yesterday demonstrated enough potential to suggest he could become one of the feared no.3′s in the NRL.
He has a great mixture of speed and strength, not to mention he is a dangerous presence for opposition under the high ball.
In the forwards, Queensland Origin player Nate Myles showcased why he has not missed a game for the Maroons since debuting for Mal Meninga’s men back in 2006.
One only has to look at the way Myles nearly rounded up Nathan Merritt in the second half to demonstrate how committed he was to leaving his mark against a Rabbitohs side with the so called best pack in the NRL.
Myles ended up making the most tackles out of any player on the park with 34 next to his name. Not to mention he also made 16 hit-ups for 134 metres in an inspirational performance.
It seems filling the shoes of club stalwart Craig Fitzgibbon may not be as difficult as first thought judging by Myles performance.
Indeed all of the seventeen Roosters who took to the field against the more fancied Bunnies yesterday performed their tasks with aplomb.
It was a win befitting of the club’s ‘new attitude, new beginning’ approach – a beginning that could not have started any brighter for a side which finished in Rugby League’s darkest corner last season.
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March 15th 2010 @ 8:42pm
OldManEmu said | March 15th 2010 @ 8:42pm | Report comment
I think that the sacking of Ronny Palnmer by B Smith will prove to be a mater stroke. The new strenght and conditioning and fitness coaches had the boys jumping out of their absolute skin.The players were lean ans fast and when the Rabbotohs big boppers were blowing hard after thirty minutes the Roosters were just hitting their straps.
Pearce, Anasta, Carney might well be a 7,6,1 spine for the Blues this year….. early days, early days I know but I think the Roosters will still be playing into September this season.
March 16th 2010 @ 10:54am
ScottWoodward.me said | March 16th 2010 @ 10:54am | Report comment
Emu
Brett Stewart was a certainty for the fullback spot but he got injured last night so next in line will be Hayne and although the coach loves gidley, he is also injured.
Carney can play anywhere in the backs so a bench spot could be a chance.
March 17th 2010 @ 7:45pm
Norm said | March 17th 2010 @ 7:45pm | Report comment
A great start but a long awy to go.
March 18th 2010 @ 8:04am
Mushi said | March 18th 2010 @ 8:04am | Report comment
I too think it is a tad early to get excited. 4 weeks in last year and the top 8 looked a fair bit different to the final top 8.
Whilst there were lots of positives, souths gave us the degustation menu of chances with errors early and often and sheer butchery of try scoring chances.
Also our left hand side defence was hideous, if they ever need extra space to widen roads around moore park they could use the gapping three lane corridor on the roosters left hand side, god knows souths did (although they handled it like a nervous learner driver beset by hail on a highway).
That said my hopes for this year were a better showing and giving Smith the horses for a serious finals contender in 2011.
March 18th 2010 @ 10:58am
PuntPal said | March 18th 2010 @ 10:58am | Report comment
I love how people get carried away after 1 round. In 2009, the Warriors were the team to beat after the 5 round mark. Storm were getting punished then too…I dont need to tell you how those two teams ended up
Lets wait and see before we declare the Roosters back in the big league. I still think them and Broncs will battle for the spoon…flash in the pan round 1
March 20th 2010 @ 5:08pm
Roosterman said | March 20th 2010 @ 5:08pm | Report comment
Form and expectations aside, the Roosters jersey seems to get worse looking each year. In saying that though, the move from the heavier material to these ‘rash vests’ hasn’t helped any of the clubs in that department. I can understand the players wanting to wear the thin jerseys – they’d be a whole lot cooler in Australian conditions – but why do the supporters get gypped by having to pay exorbitant amounts for a flimsy, probably less than accurate version of what the payers are wearing? The Steggles logo on the front looks out of place on the jersey, almost as bad as the Western Union logo did – yellow just didn’t go with red, white and blue. When I was a kid, the only lettering you could get was the heat transfer type and the trouble with that was that the plastic was the side you had to put down first, leaving a cheap, felt-type material on the jersey’s exterior. As you can well imagine, this just wouldn’t suffice for my brother and I so mum sewed each letter on, so that the plastic was side showed, not the felt side. Ah, that was more like it – just like what the players wore….as long as you were standing far enough away to not see the stitching, that is. I decided I could forgive mum for this little glitch; after all, she had spent countless hours painstakingly aligning each letter that made up CITY FORD and she was careful to keep the letters evenly spaced and exactly as they appeared on the jerseys of Kevin Hastings, David Michael, Mike Eden and all of my other favourite players of the day. The night they were finished was the longest night of our lives, my brother’s and mine. Neither of us could sleep. We knew that the following day would be a long haul, too: we had to finish school before we could get home and put our jerseys to the test on the sporting field at the end of our street. With each of our jerseys carefully placed over chairs in our bedroom, proudly displaying our plastic numbers – his was seven and mine five – and the CITY FORD that shone in the moonlight, as well as the NSWRLFC emblem and the EASTERN SUBURBS emblem (the best emblem there ever was, for mine) we tried desperately to get some sleep; but thoughts of what tomorrow would bring conspired against us and I don’t recall either of us eventually finding sleep that night. Not that it mattered: what was one night without sleep when we were about to become pint-sized replicas of our heroes? The day dragged on, as it does when there are pressing matters that are far more important than school. But when the bell went that day we were the first kids to hit the asphalt and we didn’t stop running until we reached home. Our jerseys were ready, along with our Roosters shorts, socks and special Roosters shoes that mum found at Kevin Junee’s store. We dressed hurriedly and sprinted to the park. Our friends hadn’t been as eager as us so we were forced to go it alone for the thirty odd minutes it took for them to get there. I ran at my brother and told him to let me past him and give chase, so that he could grab my jersey by the number and test its durability. Game on. A deft step off my right foot and I was past him in a flash. He came at me from behind, grabbed the number with both hands and pulled me to the ground. The ground was still wet from the downpour a few nights earlier and I decided to use this to my advantage. I lay on by back and feigned aggression, kicking out and writhing on the ground to get some soil on the number. We’d both noticed that the Roosters players could be covered from head-to-toe in mud on a wet day but the CITY FORD was always visible and stayed a stark white, as the letters were plastic and the mud couldn’t stick, nor could it penetrate the material. I rose to my feet and showed my brother my back so that he could make an assessment. “Looks good,” he said excitedly and not sullenly as he had when we’d tested the felt numbers and lettering some weeks before. “Really white this time,” he enthused as he circled me to complete his inspection. “But guess what?” His voice had a slightly disappointed edge to it this time. “What?” I urged him. I couldn’t begin to imagine what else he could have to report. “The white cotton on the letters and numbers is all brown now,” he dutifully informed me. He knew all too well that the imperfections in my jersey would be present in his as well. We looked at each other for a moment with a forlorn look on our faces. We’d seen the Roosters players up close – all the times we patted them as they ran out of the sheds at the old Sydney Sportsground seem a distant memory now – and they never had stained stitching. Come to think of it, there didn’t seem to be any stitching on their letters. I knew we were thinking the same thing when my brother, as though a light switched on in his head, exclaimed, “So they must glue the felt part to the jersey!” I realised for the first time in my young life that my even younger brother was a genius. I thought it…..but he said it. He’d just unlocked the secret to the Eastern Suburbs Roosters jersey. For the second night in a row, neither of us could sleep: we abandoned our friends that afternoon in order to run home and report our findings to mum. She shared our enthusiasm and apologised for not anticipating the ‘stained cotton’ issue. She need not have – we were both more than grateful to mum for all her efforts and we ourselves felt sorry for her, knowing that she tried so hard and we were both extremely hard to please. But the reason we couldn’t sleep is that mum had come up with a brilliant idea – the most brilliant idea that any mum had ever had, in the history of the world: she told us she planned to call the Eastern Suburbs Leagues Club the very next day and ask if they could help out. Whoever she spoke to must have clearly understood the importance of the request because they not only told mum that the letters and numbers were heat-transferred on and that both sides were plastic and one side melted onto the jersey’s cotton; but they also told mum that the team’s jerseys were due to be numbered soon and that the same company also did the CITY FORD lettering, as well as the emblems, both NSWRLFC and Eastern Suburbs, and that she could, as a special favour, drop our jerseys into the Leagues Club so that they could be processed with all the other Roosters jerseys at the same time. There were more restless nights as we counted down the days until our jerseys were ready. We mused at whose jerseys ours would be under, and on top of, as they awaited their transformations. On a hot summer’s day in 1983, our dreams were realised when we arrived home from school to find our jerseys, looking every bit as spectacular as we’d imagined. We wore those jerseys day and night, year after year until, finally, we outgrew them; but not before every letter and each number was put through every kind of torture imaginable. Both our jerseys stood the test of time and I still think, to this day, that jersey was the best the Roosters have ever donned in their proud history. I wish I knew where it got to in the end. Doesn’t everyone?