Roosters ruthless on sombre occasion

A DEPLETED Tully Tigers took the long drive to Atherton but may have wished they’d stayed home, with the Roosters rolling the visitors 52-6 on Saturday in an emotional night for the club.

Club stalwart Darryl Day was in the team’s dressing room when he was informed of the passing of his father.

The team wore black armbands but coach Graham Clark said the devastating news was hard to swallow.

“It was a pretty disrupted warm-up,” Clark said. “We were handing out the team jerseys as it happened. I hope next week we can have a minute’s silence.”

The Roosters responded by putting 10 unanswered tries on the board. Tully hooker Daniel Fawkes crossed the line in the dying seconds of the match but it served as little consolation for the Tigers who were without key players Matthew Musumeci, Jack Murphy and Colin Wilkie.

“We probably had a better side last time we played them,” Clark said. “They were short probably three of their better players.

“They went well against Yarrabah and I’d say they’re disappointed with that.”

Bullocking front rower Anthony Curcio came up with four tries for the home team, even if the coach still isn’t sure how they happened.

“Sometimes occur,” Clark joked.

“He’s not the most likely bloke to score. He’s not very fast.

“He might need to deflate miracles his head a bit after that. He was the only bloke in the team who hadn’t scored.

“The running joke was that he had to do the nudie run at the end of the year because we weren’t going to let him score.

“I benched him in the second half but he reckons he could have ended up with eight.”

The Roosters will play Innisfail next week.