Five things we learned from the Sydney Roosters 12-4 victory over South Sydney
THE Roosters’ defence was straight out of Trent Robinson’s dreams and Cooper Cronk proved he’s a man, not a machine. Here’s five things we learned from the second preliminary final.
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THE doors have closed at the Sydney Football Stadium for the final time and the Roosters are heading to the grand final with a 12-4 victory over the arch rivals South Sydney.
Here’s five things we learned from the absorbing clash.
1) Defence wins premierships
We already knew this, it’s an idiom that’s been around for decades but it’s a lesson that always resonates.
The Roosters made mistakes at bad times, handed over possession and gave the best attacking team in the league way too much good ball.
It didn’t matter. Trent Robinson likes to say he dreams about defence — surely this is the stuff he’s talking about. His team has conceded one try in their last two hours of football.
With Cooper Cronk the Roosters have become a very smart football side but sometimes winning isn’t about being smart, it’s about being tough enough, mentally and physically, to keep going when by all rights fatigue should have taken over. That’s what the Roosters did and they haven’t done it like that since 2013.
2) The South Sydney machine broke down
The Rabbitohs have had the most dazzling, intricate and beautiful attack in the league all year. But here, when they needed it most, they couldn’t string it together.
Despite the copious amounts of field position they were handed by the Roosters, South Sydney couldn’t crack the Bondi wall no matter how hard they tried.
They haven’t looked so out of sorts in attack all season. In their final 160 minutes of football the Rabbitohs could only manage one try and 17 points — we now know what a tremendous toll the match against Melbourne in the first week of the finals took out of them.
3) The little things all added up for Souths
When the Roosters lost their last three preliminary finals it was, in part, due to the little errors and lapses of discipline that caught up with them at the worst possible time.
They were not free of such blemishes this time, but they did enough to cover for them. Instead it was South Sydney who died of a thousand cuts — passes hit the floor or went forward, runners were in the wrong places at the wrong times, kicks went dead or were blocked.
The harder they tried the worse it got. The Burgess brothers couldn’t find their best and try as they might could not impose themselves on the play, nor could hooker Damien Cook, who was shattered at full-time following a very out of sorts display.
Quite simply, nearly everything that could go wrong for them did, repeatedly.
4) There aren’t enough words for Cooper Cronk
The joke is that Cronk is an unfeeling, clinical machine but after the injury he played through it’s fair to assume he doesn’t understand what us humans call “pain”. Amid a torrent of pressure from Souths, Cronk battled through with one arm.
He couldn’t kick the ball, he could barely pass, but he kept directing, kept going to the line, kept making his tackles and refused to surrender to the agony.
Courage is not the absence of pain and fear, it’s about confronting it, feeling it, facing it, and pushing through to the other side.
That’s what Cronk did and he deserves all the plaudits you can give him.
5) The Chooks will improve for the grand final
It’s worth remembering Latrell Mitchell and Dylan Napa will both be back for the big one after missing this game through suspension. They’ll give the Roosters a bit more class and a bit more fire for the match against Melbourne.
All eyes, of course, will be on Cronk’s fitness and how much it impacts his play — my immediate instinct is he’ll play but under extreme duress.
Removing that from the equation for a second we should expect a general lift in the Tricolours’ play and if they repeat the effort they showed against the Rabbitohs then they’ll give themselves every chance.