The Roosters have been looking for a performance like this all year: they just needed the Gold Coast Titans to help them find it.
It’s now ten on the spin against the Gold Coast, who were awful from the first minute and trailed 30-0 at the break, before putting in some late effort in garbage time to make the score a more respectable 36-18 at the end.
The Chooks were excellent with the ball, but were assisted by some of the most charitable defending they will face at NRL level.
James Tedesco, returning after his club-sanctioned week off, was exceptional from the start while Joseph Suaalii and Joey Manu, reunited on the right edge, ran riot.
Today, with those two together, Brandon Smith starting at hooker and a semi-settled halves pairing of Luke Keary and Sandon Smith, it was finally square pegs in square holes.
The only downside for the Roosters was Nat Butcher, who was put on report late for an alleged hip-drop.
“Why was there a discussion this week?” said Robinson on his decision to leave Tedesco out. “It was my call, that was it and he came back and he played the way that he played. He was a bit fresher and then he was the biggest difference in the game today.
“It’s happened a couple of times this year. It’s been hanging around for quite a while, the discussions around him.
“We can talk about selections and all that but it’s disappointing when someone gets personally attacked for doing right by the club. That’s our game I guess.”
As good as the visitors were, the Gold Coast were dreadful. Without Tino Fa’asuamaleaui, they were leaderless in the middle and coach Jim Lenihan ended up hooking halfback Tanah Boyd midway through the second half.
That did work to some extent, with the Titans winning the second half, but the cue was very much in the rack by that stage.
“It was good for us to keep working hard right through to the end but we just weren’t there at the start physically,” he said. “We just have to dust ourselves off and keep working.”
The Sydney Roosters, eh. Remember them? Red, white and blue jersey, buckets of cash, glamour club. Slightly smug but also really good. Those dudes.
Look, they’re not back. They’re done for the year and this is all kind of meaningless in that regard, but it was good for those who have enjoyed the best of Roosters football to see it return for an afternoon.
That phrase isn’t an accident, by the way. ‘Roosters football’ is a phrase that Robinson has mentioned constantly across this year, usually in reference to trying to get back to it. More than a few punters have wondered what it actually meant.
We got a little glimpse of it today. Tedesco, finally, was freed to play his best game, asking questions between the tramlines and challenging the seam between middle and edge defence.
The first try was all about the fullback identifying indecision between Tanah Boyd and Brian Kelly to get Egan Butcher over, and the second was him doing the same again, just one player further in.
Brandon Smith finally played straight and simple, dishing mostly with runs when appropriate, which helped the middle to set a better platform.
Crucially, too, the Roosters defended their errors. An early stretch of goalline kept the Titans at bay and, when the pressure was over, the Chooks made them pay.
The back three, with Suaalii returned to the wing, began the sets well and made it possible for Tedesco to get involved on his terms, rather than smothering himself in unnecessary work, and for Joey Manu to see some football without four men on him.
One of the tries featured him running, ball in one hand, through the middle, then backflipping a pass out of the back for Lindsay Collins to batter through. It’s supreme individual talent, but raised beyond the sum of their parts by the collective.
That’s what they’ve missed this year, and indeed, for long parts of last year too. When you have such individuals, it’s tempting to rely on them to win you the game. Sometimes that works, too. But those players in a system are the point. The Roosters found that today.
The caveat to any discussion of the Roosters is that the Titans are awful at times,and this was one of their worst.
Before the game, this could have been seen as the competition’s worst attack against its worst defence. One of those things was proven true at the end.
The Titans don’t concede the most points – they’re only fifth worst in that regard, ahead of the Tigers, Knights, Bulldogs and Dolphins – but averages are misleading.
The Gold Coast don’t get totally thumped all the time, avoiding the 50+ plus differential killers of some sides, and they stay in games via their attack, meaning that they rarely get blown out late in the way that other sides do.
But in terms of organisation, they are by far the worst. It’s a little less quantifiable: in terms of metres conceded and line breaks conceded, the Titans are right in the middle of the pack.
When it comes to looking terrible, though, they are absolutely the worst. It might be gut feel, or pure eye test bias, but the manner in which the Gold Coast’s edge defence can look like they’ve never met before, despite having played and trained together many, many times, is unrivalled.
Maybe they aren’t the worst defence in the NRL. They just look like it.
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