Moses not counting his chickens before Roosters match

Eels playmaker Mitchell Moses has seen a few false dawns.

When he was with the Wests Tigers, they started the 2015 season 2-0 but then lost four of their next five and finished the season 15th.

In 2016 the Tigers also started 2-0 but then lost the next seven straight although they did bounce back to finish ninth.

So in other words, back-to-back wins to start off the year, while refreshing, is no reliable forecast of how the rest of the season is going to pan out.

"The biggest thing is being able to hold it [form] for 25 rounds," Moses told NRL.com.

"It is the real key to a good team. You can't just go out and win 2-0 and think we've made it easy for ourselves from now on.

"It will take a full team performance every week.

"Even though we had a convincing win [36-16 over Bulldogs] we weren’t happy with our form on the weekend, we can be a lot better.

"Our start and our end to the game were not good at all."

Making it slightly harder was not knowing if the Roosters halves on Friday night would be Cooper Cronk and Luke Keary or Keary and Latrell Mitchell.

On match eve coach Trent Robinson confirmed Cronk hasn't been fully cleared of his hamstring strain.

"We trained as if Cronk was there. But whoever else does go there doesn't interfere with our focus and that is to complete at a much higher rate than we did last week."

At 72%, the Eels had a worse completion rate than the Bulldogs, by failing to finish 10 of their 36 sets.

"If we do that again we won't be anywhere close to the Roosters."

The Carlingford Cougars junior says a reinvigorated Eels group in 2019 is helping the early-season success.

"Everyone knows their role in the team. There was a bit of confusion last year of our roles but the coaches have been very good for us in the off-season and it showed.

"It's come from the top down that we are a good team and we need to support one another.

"So when we were 10-0 down against the Dogs, we remained calm, we kept our chin up."