Keary puts spark back into Roosters
PAUL CRAWLEY A TERRIFIC return from injury by Luke Keary and a fine performance from James Tedesco sparked the Sydney Roosters’ season to life last night.
While all the talk in the build-up to the game against Canterbury was about the battle of the big men, it was the combination of two lightweight Roosters in Keary and James Tedesco that lifted them to a 30-12 victory.
Keary and Tedesco played a hand in all three first-half tries and both played a huge role in their team’s two second-half tries.
With the Roosters now set to take on Mitchell Pearce’s Newcastle on Sunday week, Tedesco also set up Cooper Cronk’s first touchdown in his new colours.
A beautiful ball from Keary put Ryan Matterson over for the final try in the dying minutes to put the game to bed.
What it showed is that when they play the type of football everyone knows they are capable of, the Roosters have immense attacking power.
Keary’s return from a broken jaw had a massive impact while Tedesco recovered from his first-up flop.
While coach Dean Pay’s men remain winless after two rounds, to their credit they gave their fans some hope after fighting back into the match after an ordinary first half.
In a match that had several significant turning points, a controversial first-half, no-try decision that went against the Bulldogs when the Roosters had Isaac Liu in the sin bin proved crucial after the Bunker overruled an onfield decision because of an obstruction.
The Roosters’ win was soured somewhat, with winger Daniel Tupou suffering a pectoral injury that will probably keep him sidelined for an extended period.
But the big story of the night was more about the Roosters’ attack on the back of last week’s shock loss to Wests Tigers and, in that respect, it was Keary and Tedesco who owned the night.
Centre Latrell Mitchell was also far more involved than last week while Blake Ferguson had another big game.
Tedesco and Keary combined brilliantly for the first try that went the length of the field in the 12th minute after Mitchell tapped back a Kieran Foran cross-field kick on his own line.
The Bulldogs were outclassed but didn’t give up.
While Cronk’s try looked to have put the game out of Canterbury’s reach, a four-pointer to Jackson reduced the margin to 24-12 heading into the final quarter. YOU have to wonder what could have been for Canterbury had winger Marcelo Montoya not been denied a try by the bunker.
Montoya thought he had scored for the Bulldogs in the 26th minute last night when he dived over in the right corner and was awarded a try by the on-field referee.
But after several replays, Matt Frawley was deemed to have caught the ball on the inside shoulder of Josh Jackson in the lead-up and the Dogs were pinged for obstruction.
The game was tight and the Roosters only led 10-0, despite threatening to blow the game open at any minute.
A Montoya try would have made things interesting. The overruling simply added to Canterbury’s frustrations and prop Aaron Woods was seen remonstrating with referee Gerard Sutton at halftime for more than a minute because of penalties.
The count was six apiece at the break, but the Dogs received four in a row within the space of a couple of minutes in the leadup to Montoya crossing the try line.
While they lack the star power of their glamour-boy ri- vals, at least we know the Dogs will have a dig.
Nobody knows when coach Dean Pay will celebrate his first win as a head coach in the NRL, but he could not have faulted the effort of his troops. One concern is the fact his side has leaked 30 or more points in the opening two rounds.
Penrith like to throw the ball around and will pose all sorts of headaches next Friday. But there were also a few positives.
Moses Mbye was a constant threat in his new role at fullback.
The $3 million man has speed to burn and almost looked set to take on James Tedesco in an ex- plosive foot race when he palmed off Cooper Cronk and found open space. Kieran Foran was crunched by Boyd Cordner and remained on the ground for a couple of minutes before he soldiered on.
David Klemmer had 20 hitups for more than 160m and punched out big minutes.
And the Morris twins, Brett and Josh, now 31, improve with age and aimed up in attack and defence on their left edge.
Brett managed to ruin a spectacular long-range try when he denied Daniel Tupou a clean final pass to Latrell Mitchell in the opening minutes.