Roosters destroy Sea Eagles 40-16
The NRL betting sites had Roosters vs. Sea Eagles as a dead even affair, with both teams having fairly similar odds to win. Sydney were just 3.5-point favourites heading into the match on Saturday. The Roosters make the bookmakers and punters who backed Manly look daft with their absolutely dominant performance.
The Roosters destroyed the Sea Eagles 40-16. The scoreline reflected the match too. This game was not ever close.
Sydney took an early lead just 11-and-a-half minutes in with a try from Victor Radley. Roosters Skipper James Tedesco scored another 20 minutes later. Sandon Smith scored the Roosters’ third try less than five minutes after Tedesco’s.
Haumole Olakau’atu stopped the bleeding a bit with a try for the Sea Eagles before the end of the first half, but it was far from enough to close the gap between his side and Sydney.
The Roosters came out flying and scored their fourth try of the match just two minutes into the second half via a diving effort from Daniel Tupou. Tedesco scored his second of the game in the 56th minute. Then Manly scored two tries in the 20 minutes, but those were merely consolation points. It just wasn’t their day.
‘Absolute chaos’ strikes early with two head injuries
While the match ended up being a comfortable, business-like win for the Roosters, it was not like that for the entire game. Just seconds into this semi-final fixture, things turned chaotic with multiple head injuries to Sea Eagles players.
Elimination final hero Toluta'u Koula was the first to go down just nine seconds into the match, after taking an accidental blow from Sydney’s Jared Waerea-Hargreaves. The centre was momentarily knocked out and forced to leave the match with category 1 concussion symptoms.
On the very next play, Jake Trbojevic was the next to go out for Manly. The prop was knocked off his feet by a powerful run from Rooster’s Lindsay Collins. Trbojevic then had trouble getting up and was also ruled out of the match, albeit temporarily as he was allowed to return later.
All this action happened just 23 seconds into the game. Fox Sports sideline reporter Lara Pitt called the scenes “absolute chaos.”
Pitt was right. It was also a sign of things to come for the Sea Eagles in this match.
NRL Preliminary Finals preview
Sydney will play against Melbourne Storm on Saturday 27 September at AAMI Park. The betting sites have the Storm as huge favourites. PlayUp has Melbourne as 10.5-point favourites with $1.28 odds to win. Roosters, meanwhile, are outsiders at $3.70.
We’d love to disagree with the bookmakers here and make a lot of money backing the Roosters, but we have to agree with them here. We’ve already seen what Sydney look like against top opposition in the finals. They lost 30-10 against Penrith Panthers in the elimination finals stage.
It will be a very long day for Sydney at Melbourne against the Storm. The bookmakers have been wrong before though, so we’ll just have to wait and see if the Roosters can prove them wrong again on Saturday.
