Roosters 40 Eels 14
GOSFORD - The Roosters ran over Parramatta 40-14 in an NRL trial match at Gosford on Saturday night, the Eels' third loss in a row.
More than 18,500 fans saw the Roosters, minus skipper Braith Anasta, coast home in the second game of the Bluetongue Stadium double-header.
It was the Eels third straight trial loss, earlier going down to the Dragons and Panthers.
But the win could come at a big cost for Sydney, with Anthony Cherrington succumbing to a knee injury.
Nathan Hindmarsh made it through his first trial unscathed in an Eels side missing stars Jarryd Hayne, Daniel Mortimer and forwards Shane Shackleton and Justin Poore.
League bad boy Todd Carney made his presence felt early on, setting up Minichello with a clever left-foot grubber kick for the Roosters' first try.
He crossed for a try of his own in the second half.
The former Canberra-via-Cairns fullback brought his kicking boots, converting six of Sydney's seven tries.
The Eels defence was caught short at the 14-minute mark, when Pearce sprinted 25 metres to make it two tries to nil.
But last year's grand finalists settled into the pace of the match, and had their first through Joel Reddy three minutes later.
They were back in the game when second rower Brendan Oake crossed just before half time to reduce the deficit to 12-10.
The Roosters scored their third try through Sonny Tuigamala early in the second half, but a blunder from Pearce trying to keep the ball in play gave Mateo the simplest of tries just two minutes later to keep the Eels in the match.
But after Carney's try, Parramatta never really threatened, and the Roosters ran out comfortable winners.
Minichello put the icing on the cake with his second try at the 68-minute mark and setting up Symonds for the Roosters seventh right on full time.
Roosters officials said Cherrington would have scans to determine the extent of the damage to his anterior cruciate ligament.
After a full game for his new club, Carney said coach Brian Smith was keeping a lid on things, despite their two wins against fancied opponents.
"Smithy gave us a bit of a rev there about the way people are going to talk about the way were going," Carney said.
"He keeps us pretty level-headed.
"I'm not a person who's going to get cocky on the back of good press, because obviously I've been on the back of bad press too."
Carney, who played in the halves at Canberra, said he was reasonably happy with his game filling in for skipper Braith Anasta at fullback.
"Getting eighty minutes at fullback pleased me, just to get that under my belt," he said.
"(But) there's still a lot of things to work on back there."
Despite his side conceding 72 points in their past two trials, Eels coach Daniel Anderson said he was just happy not to pick up any more injuries.
"Trials do concern me, but we got off scot-free," he said.
"At the end there, I had seven first-graders and the rest of the team were blokes who hadn't played first-grade before."
But Anderson said they did not use the ball well enough.
"Just poor control of the footy in the second half. (We had) six errors inside our own 30 metre area.
"They've had between 65 and 70 per cent of the possession in the second half, nearly all in our 30-metre area. It's impossible to play like that."
- AAP
