Finals in reach for Roosters: Kennedy
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Sydney Roosters prop Martin Kennedy believes his team can bridge the four-point gap to the NRL top eight, even if recent history suggests otherwise.
The upset 42-28 win over Wests Tigers at Leichhardt Oval on Sunday snapped a four-match losing streak and kept the Roosters faint finals hopes alive.
However, at the corresponding stage last year, no clubs outside the eight were able to claw back a comparable deficit.
“I think we’ve been unlucky in a lot of the games this year, there’s been a few things out of our control that have impeded us from progressing up the ladder,” Kennedy said.
“We definitely haven’t lost any faith and having such a young side, we are always really enthusiastic at training.”
The Roosters face Manly at Allianz Stadium on Sunday and Kennedy felt it would take more than successive wins over two premiership heavyweights to stamp themselves as finals contenders.
“We’ve been disappointing in patches this year, so we’re going to have to put a lot more than one or two wins together to send any message to any other team,” Kennedy said.
“We just need to try and get ourself in a position where we can have a red-hot go at the finals.”
Emerging Roosters prop Lama Tasi said his former club Manly had one of the tougher packs in the competition, but backed his team to dominate any opposition forwards.
“When we all put our heads to it and if we believe in each other, we could steamroll any forward pack,” Tasi said.
“That’s what I believe and I’m pretty sure all the boys believe that too.”
© AAP 2013The Crowd Says (6) | Page 1 of Comments
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June 20th 2012 @ 9:17am
Alan said | June 20th 2012 @ 9:17am | Report comment
Roosters won’t make it anywhere with smith in charge he is terrible, bring in JT from the 20′s
June 20th 2012 @ 9:35am
Pot Stirrer said | June 20th 2012 @ 9:35am | Report comment
Im a roosters supporter but i dont give us much chance to make the 8, i was looking at the table yesterday and i think the current top 8 will be the top 8 at the end of the season. A team would have to have some serious injury problems to drop out of the 8 which is possible but unlikley imo.
June 20th 2012 @ 10:43am
Gareth said | June 20th 2012 @ 10:43am | Report comment
Any team that has 3 tries scored against them in 6 minutes has some serious questions to answer before they think about finals footy.
June 20th 2012 @ 2:11pm
Lancey5times said | June 20th 2012 @ 2:11pm | Report comment
Then you must give the Tigers little chance of finishing in the 8 then?? Round 8 saw Parra score about 45 tries in the last 10 minutes against them…….
June 20th 2012 @ 1:17pm
The Barry said | June 20th 2012 @ 1:17pm | Report comment
The Roosters have had some close losses and had some crook reffing decisions but they’ll be pushing it uphill to make the 8.
Their biggest problem is running out of puff 10 minutes before half time and 10 minutes into the second half.
Things can turn around pretty quickly in this comp though as various teams have shown (souths, dogs, tigers) if you can string 3-4 victories together you can make up ground pretty quickly.
June 20th 2012 @ 2:31pm
Al said | June 20th 2012 @ 2:31pm | Report comment
Given the circumstances that happened and the way it affected the tigers, I don’t believe either teams should be taking anything to do with form from that game. Without making excuses or criticizing the roosters, the game itself was clearly not number 1 priority for the tigers on the day. However let’s hope the roosters make the finals… They seem to always step up for the tigers..
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