A gutsy and under manned Roosters outfit narrowly defeated the Brisbane Broncos at Allianz Stadium on Saturday night.
In the opening ten minutes it was looking exactly like the game it was set up to be, two top of the ladder teams running hard and tackling even harder.
It took ten minutes to see points on the board, and it happened when Justin Hodges gave away a penalty and James Maloney elected to take the two points.
Disaster struck early when not one, but two Roosters limped off field.
Jared Waerea-Hargreaves got up gingerly from a tackle, while Mitchell Pearce looked to have fallen awkwardly trying to collect a pass from Jake Friend.
The saying goes though that the show must go on and it did, when Jackson Hastings replaced Pearce and Isaac Liu replaced Waerea-Hargreaves.
After a close call to Blake Ferguson being denied a try, Brendan Elliot would storm in minutes later on the back of some slick ball work from the Roosters.
This game was physical, with neither side looking remotely likely of backing down or throwing in the towel.
The Roosters came close to scoring on two separate occasions only to be denied by marginal errors.
They were gutsy in the opening half, and would need to continue that in the second half.
They would go into the break holding an eight point lead.
The second half started perfectly for the Broncos, scoring in the corner through through Jordan Kahu who found space out wide.
It seemed that none of the Roosters were hanging their heads though, they would score in their next set of six through Boyd Cordner, after pouncing on a grubber kick from Maloney.
The Broncos would be next to score through Corey Oates, when he got a near perfect ball from Ben Hunt to acrobatically leap over in the corner.
It was an unbearably tense game of football, with a fair share of close calls and not a lot of skin left under the fingernails.
The Roosters made two try saving tackles on the last in what was gritty and determined goal-line defensive effort.
The Broncos had one last shot at victory, but a long pass that went into touch would be the final play in this one.
The Roosters coming away from this one with a 12-10 victory, claiming top spot on the ladder and winning their tenth game in a row.
