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Opinion
The NRL season has got off to a flying start – but not for the Roosters.
And in this article, I will be spreading my thoughts on their Round 1 performance and if it means much.
The most disappointing team this week were the Sydney Roosters. The Roosters were defeated by the sharp-looking Knights on Saturday afternoon.
The end score was 20-6 and the scoreline really shown how the game was played out. The Chooks were simply out played, out worked and their discipline was definitely not close to its best.
Their opposition ran for nearly 400 more metres and the Roosters’ completion rate was at a very low 66 per cent.
On top of this, the Knights had 35 tackle breaks compared to the Roosters’ 13. To add to this, the men in red, white and blue had 35 missed tackles. The line-break count was also 7-0 in favour of Newcastle.
These stats that were heavily won by Newcastle just show that the Roosters simply were defeated in nearly all key departments that win games.
Luke Keary only took six runs, which was the third lowest in the team and is just not enough for him.
Luke Keary (Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)
Although it was his first game in a while, he needs to have the ball in his hands and run at the line a lot more than he did on Saturday.
The Roosters just couldn’t capitalise when they had field position that they wanted as they either came up with a mistake or just couldn’t find a strike play to get past the Knights’ defence.
Despite most of the team being out of sync in their first performance, I was impressed with Connor Watson’s club debut.
He did his job very well at number nine in the defensive department as Watson recorded 52 tackles, which was the most by any player on the day.
I also liked how he wasn’t afraid to ball play and take the line on. The Roosters play really well when they are direct because they have one of the best forward packs in the comp and when they run the ball, they have a range of players like James Tedesco to play off the back of them.
The 2018-19 premiers won’t be stuck in the mud for long as I still have them winning the premiership as they will solve their Round 1 problem and they will sync their combinations and get their game plan right.
Their next two games are against 2021 top-four finishers as they host Manly before the battle of Sydney.
If they lose both these games, then the big questions start to be asked and things won’t look too good. But they have a great chance at winning both and putting this Round 1 match behind them.
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