They won their eighth straight game in their 38-22 victory over the Knights on Sunday, but it didn't mean coach Trent Robinson was pleased with how his team performed, where he offered a "post-mortem" of how the Roosters' momentum is currently keeping them formidable in times of need.
With the Roosters up 32-0 after 41 minutes, the Knights were looking to come home with a wet sail after running four tries past them in the second half, before five-eighth James Maloney halted their momentum with the match-sealer four minutes from time.
While winning is always positive considering they were the only top four team to have won this weekend, the Roosters – for the second time in nine days – gave up 20-plus points , after scuppering their 22-0 lead to the Bulldogs in Round 21, where they had to fight back from 28-22 down to secure an eventual win.
"You want momentum and you want form. I think we've got some momentum, and we did have form. We've done some really good things coming out of the bye, and now we want to marry the two factors up," Robinson said post-game.
"We've got to get our form a little bit better. So eight straight's really nice, but if you can learn lessons after a win, that's what we need to do. So our form has improved on one side of the ball, but we better get back to our defensive [best] on the other side.
"We've been by far the best defensive team this year. But that's two weeks in a row. 28 points and 22 points are unacceptable. We need to remedy that pretty quickly because it wasn't great."
Despite their second half woes, the Roosters still did manage to run in five tries in just over a half of football with plenty of positives coming from fullback Roger Tuivasa-Sheck's hat-trick of tries.
Though ultimately pointing out that above all they still did manage to win, Robinson still couldn't help but lament the Roosters' failure to close out proceedings.
"After we scored right after half-time, we then just got loose. We thought we were going to just roll back into it. We needed to work hard for it in the second half and put some pressure on. And we just opened the door really early," Robinson said.
"We just didn't do what we did to build the game in the first half and that was just a bit of a lack of concentration there. For me in summary, I'm really disappointed to do that in the second half.
"I think this weekend's shown it's hard to win footy games. We don't want to play like that often, but we've won a footy game. Some guys didn't play their best – they need to improve. But we still won."
