A low scoring game. Multiple sin bins. Early penalty goals. Joseph Suaalii running around at fullback. No, it’s not the 2025 Wallabies, it’s the first half of the Sydney Roosters’ 28-20 win over Parramatta.
The biggest ticket in town was the chance to watch Suaalii in action, and those tuning in to see why Rugby Australia shelled out so much cash were given a bonus when the 19-year-old was shifted to fullback, the position he has been signed to play in union.
They would have also been baffled by how he ended up there: James Tedesco, the best fullback in the world in either code, was laid out by a high, late shoulder from Eels winger Bailey Simonsson.
Teddy was taken off with a concussion and will miss the next 11 days, but the Parra man got just ten minutes. It has been a red card in rugby union for years, and should have been here as well. He will get more from the Match review Panel, for all that is worth after the fact. Will Penisini had already been binned for an earlier professional foul.
Beyond that, it was a strange performance from the Roosters, who dealt with Parramatta with ease at times, but put the cue in the rack early and ended up worrying their way through the last five minutes.
Parra were shorn of pack leader Junior Paulo – binned for a high shot and later suspended last week – and were always an outside hope without their main man. The Eels move to 1-4, a record that belies how well they have actually played at times. Again, this was a gutsy, committed performance for which they get nothing.
“Not a lot of luck is going our way at the moment, but we can change that,” said coach Brad Arthur.
“But we are hanging in there and I was really happy with how they kept fighting. I thought our scramble was really good.
“We just have to stay in it and keep fighting hard and it is going to turn and we have just got to make sure we are ready to go when it does.
“We have played some pretty good teams and I feel like our effort and attitude the first five rounds this year is better than last year.
“It’s where we finished last year with our effort and attitude that’s where we have picked up, but we just have to get on top of some football things and as soon as we do that we will be right.”
The boy wonder has been in the news, if you hadn’t noticed, and didn’t disappoint on his first appearance since signing a $1.6m deal with Rugby Australia. All eyes were on the 19-year-old, and he didn’t disappoint.
Following Tedesco’s head knock and Joey Manu’s suspension, Suaalii got to play fullback for the Roosters and showed what he can do in the role.
He sat Mitchell Moses on his backside with a picture perfect sidestep after just 13 minutes, laid two tries through classic fullback handling and took hard carry after hard carry in the high-stepping style that has impressed throughout the World Cup.
Suaalii in full flight is undeniably one of the great sights of rugby league and, in all likelihood, will be in rugby union as well. But there’s still plenty of work to do here.
Passes went behind their target more than once when either of Teddy or Manu would have nailed it. Defensively, there are serious issues though one suspects that those skills will hardly be tested in union.
There was a half chance late in the first half for Parramatta where a kick went one way and the fullback went the other. Fortunately for the Roosters, the ball went dead.
“You can burn a lot of energy thinking about stuff in a week like that, but he had a lot of energy tonight so he didn’t burn it thinking about external stuff,” said Trent Robinson.
“He was able to handle that. He’s going to have to learn how to handle that, and I thought that energy was there. To go from centre to fullback, know the role of that position and continue to the end was a credit to him.
“I thought he did outstandingly well. Some guys get stunned in that position, but he played a lot. Left, right and through the middle. He looked really comfortable there. He had to get control of our line right away and he did a great job.
Every fullback meeting we do, he’s there. He’s trying to learn that left centre role but he’s always ready to learn the fullback role and we didn’t miss a beat there.”
Parramatta’s great yarn of the week has concerned Clint Gutherson and his position in the team. It’s been a bit of a storm in a teacup: the Eels ask Gutho if he’d mind if they tried to find another fullback, seen as they only have one, and he said fine.
Anyone who doubts that Gutherson is the best fullback the Eels have would do well to watch this game. He pulled off a magical trysaver on Victor Radley, then was in his best backing up form to score their opening try.
Gutho isn’t quite on the tier of the three more elite number ones – Tedesco, Trbojevic and Trell – but he’s not far behind and what he lacks in ‘x factor’, as Parra called it, he makes up in sheer commitment, nous and leadership. They discard him at your peril.
His contribution set the tone for the Eels. His effort to stop Radley proved contagious: Moses made a copybook legs tackle to stop Daniel Tupou and Dylan Brown did the same on the other side to deny Hutchinson. Without those interventions, this would have been done by half time.
Not much went right for Parra, who were battered in possession and field position. It was partly their own doing, through two sin bins and a raft of set restarts, early in the second half, that saw an incredible 15 consecutive tackles on their line before it was eventually breached.
The late rally helped make the scoreline look better, and the big out in the front row excuse this loss to a champion team. Just try telling that to Brad Arthur, however.
On the day Suaalii made his second appearance in men’s rugby league in early 2021, playing for North Sydney Bears against South Sydney, the media box at Homebush was much busier than might be expected for a NSW Cup tie.
They came to see the future, and they got it. Sam Walker ran the show. He was in the big leagues mere weeks later and has remained
The halfback chalked up appearance number 50 here and it’s hard to believe that he’s just 20: it feels like he’s been around forever.
He was playing the hits from the start, with three harbour bridge passes in the first half – one left, two right – and a superb combination, heads up moment that sawa him combine with new hooker Brandon Smith and old stager Luke Keary for the best try of the night.
Walker is so seamless at this level, so able to impact games at such a young age and so fearless in always trying to make something happen that it’s barely believable that he’s still 20.
His defence, long the bugbear of Roosters fans, has improved too. The kid is going to be some player. He already is.
One of the week’s talking points around the big move was proven true tonight: there is a well of Joseph Suaaliis to which the sport can continually return.
Few might have expected Jaxson Paulo to be one of them, but on the balance of the four games we have seen this year so far, he has far outshone his more celebrated teammate.
Souths were happy to see the back of him late last year and he couldn’t even get picked for the Samoa squad that Suaalii dominated, but that extra offseason training has really paid off. The kid has been a revelation.
Tonight, he offered the hard backfield carries that he has always had, but also deftness of touch to put Drew Hutchinson in for the opener and deliver multiple offloads, as well as the finishing instinct to get himself over from Suaalii’s smart pass.
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