SYDNEY Roosters coach Trent Robinson disputed suggestions his team combined poorly during their 42-18 loss to the Warriors last night.
The tricolours mentor was in an agreeable and philosophical mood after the heavy defeat at GO Media Stadium, twice using the term “cool” – in a hippy, relaxed context – during his post-match media conference.
But he took issue with a question about his team’s supposed lack of combination under new halves Sam Walker and Daly Cherry Evans.
“Nah, I don’t think so … how many points did we score?” Robinson said.
“I thought we opened them up a lot and I don’t think to look to the combination is looking in the right area.
“We could have grabbed one or two more (tries). I think a couple got pulled back there so I didn’t see the combination as an issue. It will improve, that’s for sure, but we’re looking in the wrong spot for the reason for that game.”
The coach described the 11-2 penalty count in favour of the Warriors at one stage – it finished 11-4 – under coach as “quite incredible”.
“Things will go against you. I think 11-2 … the opposition will apply a lot of pressure. I think it depends on the referee, how they determine those.
“And 11-2’s quite incredible in our game. Then we had video ref decisions and all of that.
“But as I go back to and what team you want to be: with that swing against you, do you let in that many points?
“We want to be a team that you can have 11-2 against, that you can have decisions go against you, and then you can put your gloves up and say ‘that’s cool, we might be a few points down but we can hold onto that no matter how far it swings’.
“Round one? Yep, we weren’t able to do that. Round two? We’ll see.”
Captain James Tedesco added: ““Obviously our discipline wasn’t good enough. You can say the referee penalised us or gave six again which is part of the game but I think it was just on us to hold our gloves up and defend as best we could and I thought we did that in patches.”
On injuries, the coach said: “Spencer Leniu, he did his hammy in the warm-up so that’s why the change (happened). It doesn’t seem too bad but (he was) not good enough to play.”