It was a dark Monday night for the Eels back in Round 4 as they were trampled to the tune of 50-0.
Things started badly for the Eels then got worse, but to an extent the Roosters never even gave them a chance to get into the game – although they didn’t do themselves any favours with 40 missed tackles against 12 for the Roosters and 12 errors versus the Roosters’ four.
The Roosters bossed possession with 57 per cent, which helped them to dominate the yardage 1580 metres to just 1009 for the Eels. They had no trouble running through some ragged Eels defence, notching nine line-breaks to nil while also popping nine offloads against just one for Parramatta.
The forwards got the Roosters rolling, with Jared Waerea-Hargreaves opening the scoring after 12 minutes before Sonny Bill Williams crossed a quarter of the way through the game. The Eels never really looked like competing from that point but when Roger Tuivasa-Sheck scored a seven-minute double late in the first half, the question became ‘how bad will this get’?
Pretty bad, was the answer, as the Roosters ran in a further five tries in the second half through Michael Jennings, Daniel Mortimer, Daniel Tupou, Boyd Cordner and Tuivasa-Sheck who earned himself a hat trick.
Young Roosters winger Tupou had a breakout game, running for 191 metres with the aid of three line-breaks in addition to his try. Centres Jennings and Shaun Kenny-Dowall both passed 150 metres while breaking six tackles each as the Roosters’ back five all bettered 100 running metres for the game.
A couple of the Eels backs in particular had a tough night against their rampant opposition – Vai Toutai missed five tackles and made three errors, while Jacob Loko tallied four missed tackles with two errors.