Jared Waerea-Hargreaves stole the headlines, highlights and a lowlight or two as well in his record-breaking 307th Roosters appearance.
But in the fine print of their favourite madman’s milestone match, the Tricolours enhanced their premiership credentials in a 42-12 demolition of the Dragons.
Long before the score blew out, it was the Dragons’ 46 tackles inside their opposition’s 20-metre zone by the 50th minute that told the tale for both sides.
St George Illawarra, themselves boasting finals claims before kick-off, rarely threatened and regularly drove coach Shane Flanagan to obvious frustration in the coach’s box.
Plenty of those tackles pressing the Roosters’ tryline came with a one-man advantage, Waerea-Hargreaves naturally and somewhat poetically the man sin-binned for a high tackle on Max Feagai.
By half-time the Red V had dominated everywhere but on the scoreboard. And yet the Roosters’ 14-6 advantage somehow flattered the visitors, such was their impotence when pushing for points against a 12-man defence.
“If you want to do anything in this competition you have to defend well,” Roosters coach Trent Robinson said.
“You have to defend well when you don’t have possession ... if you’re not ready for [defending with] a 45-55 [split of possession] you won’t go far by the end of the year.
“You don’t always want to practice it... but for the most part we had to sustain it and that’s a step forward on defence over the last couple of years.”
The JWH experience included a bloodied bonce that required six stitches and belting anything that entered his orbit. That included Feagai with a shot to the head in the 16th minute.
The Roosters faithful answered Waera-Hargreaves with a standing ovation on his way off.
“It was exactly how one of Jared’s games should go,” Robinson grinned afterwards.
“Jared teaches a lot of us about what is your true nature and true character and are you going to honour that in what you do... It was wonderful to see him play the game in that way.”
Dom Young scores for the Roosters.Credit: Getty Images
A 14-12 scoreline in the 55th minute gave the Dragons and Flanagan positives to take stock of, though the Roosters never seemed truly threatened by a largely listless Red V attack.
Victor Radley knocked himself out of the game trying to prevent a try in the corner to Christian Tuipulotu, and from there the NRL’s most prolific attack went to work.
Tries to Lindsay Collins, James Tedesco put the result beyond doubt before Daniel Tupou and Sitili Tupouniua joined them on the scoresheet.
Flanagan was left to lament a lethargic effort that leaves them outside the top eight ahead of next Saturday’s clash against Brisbane.
“We’ve been better than that,” Flanagan said.
“We were a bit slow with our execution of our attack, we were a bit concerned about the conditions. It’s something we’ll look at, and we are better than that. We just need to take our medicine today and look at the positives out of it.”
