Sydney Roosters coach Trent Robinson has rejected criticism of his team's continuing inconsistent work in attack, noting that as long as they continue to defend well and win the key moments in games, they still have time to work on putting a complete 80-minute performance together.
In a similar post-match press conference to the one he gave after an at-times sloppy win over the Sharks in Round 25, Robinson focused on his team's ability to produce big plays at the right time – in particular Latrell Mitchell's late match-winning try.
"I reckon most of you guys [in the media] are sitting there thinking 'are these guys any good or not, when are they going to play the full 80 minutes' and all that, but Daniel Tupou dives on that loose ball, Mitchell Pearce dives on that loose ball, Latrell Mitchell has those moments," Robinson said.
"There's two ways to win games and that's to be really dominant for a long period of time or it's to know the moments you need to do to win a game and we haven't quite found that [80 minute performance] at the moment.
"There's still a couple of opportunities to go that we can, but too many people have underestimated those moments that shut out games or go after games. It's so important. So important. It's fine with us [to win like that] but we just have to keep coming up with them."
Robinson however conceded that after such a dominant start he would like not to see his players then trail Brisbane inside the final 10 minutes.
"There was bits [in the game] where I thought 'ok, we're on here, this is moving in the direction of a full game' and then it didn't happen," he said.
"We let Brisbane back in. But our job's just to keep improving. Do we have a lot to improve on? Yeah. That's for sure. The last plays on either end, some of the biggest plays in the game we need to get better at.
"Usually we're one of the best defensive last-play teams in the comp and we had a bad night in a semi-final. We don't like that. Of course you want continual improvement and that's what we'll keep working on over the next couple of weeks."
