In what was a controversial game between the Roosters and the Sea Eagles, Manly coach Des Hasler refused to blame a contentious 8-point-try for Manly’s poor performance at the Sydney Football Stadium.
It was SKD who stole the show though, scoring a hat-trick of tries, including an 85 metre intercept pass. The try had some controversy though, with Manly centre Steve Matai possibly held back by a Roosters player.
The controversial 8-point-try came when Jamie Lyon flopped on SKD after he had grounded the ball, making contact with the players’ head.
Lyon was put on report for the incident, and Carney converted the try to tie the game at 14-14 all after the Sea Eagles had stormed out to a 14-0 lead.
Despite all the controversy though, Hasler wasn’t in the mood to criticise the referees as we have seen him do so before.
“It could’ve gone either way couldn’t it? Was there a penalty in Matai being taken off the ball? Possibly.”
Lyon however, disagreed with the decision as a whole.
“I thought it should’ve been a penalty to Matai,” he said.
“He got tackled without the ball and he was trying to go for the ball, I suppose I probably shouldn’t have tried to tackle him but i dint think it was worthy of an eight-point try that’s for sure.”
Despite the controversy, the Roosters won on the back of a fantastic second half performance, perhaps their best of the year.
The Roosters managed to score three quick tries in a 10 minute period either side of half-time to give them all the momentum and the two competition points.
Roosters coach Brian Smith was shell-shocked at just how resilient his young side could be, who did well to recover after being physically man-handled for the first 35 minutes of the game.
“It wouldn’t have surprised us if Manly had punched us to death today,” Smith said.
“They’re a really physical team and we haven’t stood up to that this year.
“I thought they really turned it on (and) if our guys hadn’t done something about it could’ve got butt-ugly.”