The Sydney Roosters have secured their spot in the finals and sent the Newcastle Knights to their 16th loss of the season with a 24-point victory at home on Friday night.
With Shaun Kenny-Dowall making his Knights debut against his old club and the Roosters missing some key stalwarts including veteran hooker Jake Friend, it was earmarked as a potential danger game for the tri-colours. But the Knights just couldn’t take a trick for much of the contest.
They spent more or less the first ten minutes of the contest on the attack, but couldn’t find a way to make the Roosters pay. Despite forcing a number of dropouts, they eventually made an error and the Roosters made no mistakes in getting first points on the board.
Their opening try came through Blake Ferguson after a stunning kick from Latrell Mitchell. Trapped on the left sideline, he booted it across the ground on the wrong foot, with Ferguson leaping through to score.
The Roosters second try came not long after with Luke Keary running around a bad tackle attempt from Danny Levi to score under the posts.
At that point, it was a 12-point lead for the Roosters, but they blew plenty of opportunities in the next quarter of an hour. Errors and dropped balls hurt, as did penalties which continually let the Knights off the hook working it out of their own end.
The Knights did manage to score just ten minutes from the halftime break with Shaun Kenny-Dowall running onto a grubber from Queensland State of Origin winger Dane Gagai to score against his old club.
At halftime, the Roosters were ahead by eight points and it was clear Newcastle needed to be first to score in the second.
They weren’t though. It was a scrappy opening to the second half with both teams struggling to put points on the board. Chanel Mata’utia was taken out with a concussion in the 56th minute with the lead still at eight, but the floodgates opened shortly afterwards.
It was an uninspiring performance from the Roosters, but Mitchell Pearce, Luke Keary and Connor Watson began to make their combination sing. Daniel Tupou scored a somewhat controversial try in the 61st minute after Latrell Mitchell appeared to knock a ball on.
From there, Isaac Liu and Connor Watson both scored within five minutes of each other, the Roosters extending their lead to 24 with ten minutes to go which would be the end result.
The scoreboard, in the end probably wasn’t a fair reflection of the game, but in a season where the Knights have worked hard, it was another result going against them with a couple of tries in the last quarter of an hour making it seem worse than it truly was.
Sydney Roosters 28
Newcastle Knights 4
Who are the hardest working big men in the NRL?
1. Manu is not No.1 at Roosters Everyone knows Joey Manu is a really good fullback. He’s probably in the top five in the…
Kalyn Ponga showed he was tough but the Knights didn’t display too much intelligence in allowing him to remain on the field when he…
Newcastle have taken the two points over St George Illawarra at McDonald Jones Stadium, edging the Dragons 30-10 on a night when the weather…
Playing talent is always important, yet creating a winning culture even more so.
The life of an NRL coach is portrayed as a cut-throat occupation where they could get the punt at any given moment. In reality,…
