Battling to keep pace with the top eight, the Roosters are likely to be without half Hugo Savala again for Thursday night’s bumper clash against Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Already dealing with wrist ligament damage that kept him out of the Cronulla loss, Savala was spotted walking out of Shark Park on Friday night with his left foot in a moon boot.<\/p>\n
His foot issue is not believed to be serious, but it gives the 23-year-old another hurdle to clear to return on Thursday night at Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Roosters completed poorly in Friday night’s 31-18 loss to Cronulla, making 17 errors for the match and finishing just 44 per cent of sets in the second half.<\/p>\n
Robinson also conceded after the game they had been “beaten physically”, lacking a presence against the Sharks in a virtual four-point game for both sides.<\/p>\n
“We did, we missed it (physically),” Collins said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So we need to do something about it. It’s a big job, especially for the front row in that position.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’ve just got to set the tone for the game and how it will be played out with that physicality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s about going into the game, not expecting things to happen. You have to create it. The only way to create that physicality is by being physical.”<\/p>\n
The Storm will likely be without Nelson Asofa-Solomona for the match due to his errant elbow against Manly on Saturday, but Collins predicted that would matter little.<\/p>\n
“They have the same mindset as we do with that next-man up mentality and whoever you put in that position is going to do a good job,” Collins said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Melbourne have got a good squad there, always have.”<\/p>\n
If Savala does miss, it will likely mean Chad Townsend and Sam Walker will remain in the halves, after the former was picked ahead of Sandon Smith last week.<\/p>\n
In 10th spot after the round, the Roosters have three crucial games against Melbourne, Manly and the Dolphins over the next three weeks.<\/p>\n
But regardless of the halves changes in recent weeks, hooker Connor Watson said Townsend and Walker should not shoulder the blame for the poor attack against the Sharks.<\/p>\n
“It’s more about what us forwards do and give (the halves) a good platform to play off,” Watson said.<\/p>\n
“Our football was played out of our own end. It just felt like we were coming out of our own half the whole time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As halves, you don’t get much opportunity when you’re doing that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As a forward pack, back five, whoever is carrying the ball, we need to have better shape and do a better job for those guys – put them in more positions where they can actually play and utilise their skill and decision making.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Battling to keep pace with the top eight, the Roosters are likely to be without half Hugo Savala…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-8739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}