Warriors 20
Roosters 18
Kevin Locke needed a stretcher to exit AMI Stadium, but it was the Roosters who were left feeling sick after the winger's hat-trick try with 53 seconds remaining condemned them to a last-gasp defeat.
Locke cannoned into the base of the post as he flopped on his toe-through to score
the winning try and complete his first NRL hat-trick. The young winger looked in agony and never regained his feet, but thanks to him a Warriors season that had been on its knees is now in pretty decent shape.
The two crucial NRL points took the Warriors level with five teams who fill positions five to nine on the NRL ladder. They are well and truly alive.
"Every game in the second half of the year feels like it is worth double," coach Ivan Cleary said. "And any time you win two in a row you start climbing your way up the ladder. So it is a big opportunity to go back home now and to continue this bit of a run we have got."
Roosters coach Brian Smith admitted the result was hard to swallow given his side's dominant performance in the Canterbury gloom.
"The very best team finished second," Smith said. "We are entitled to have an inquiry and I reckon there should be a proper inquiry about it as well. It doesn't happen very often any more in footy."
Given he insisted he had no problem with the debatable awarding of Locke's first try, it was difficult to tell where Smith felt the inquiry should be focused.
Cleary refused to concede that a Roosters side that adopted an expansive approach in the sodden, freezing conditions had been the better side.
"I don't know. I wasn't really watching them," Cleary said. "I was pretty proud of the boys, the way they just didn't give up.
"Sometimes you get them and sometimes you don't. You've got to at least put yourself in a position to give yourselves an opportunity and I thought we did that."
Roosters captain Braith Anasta was a late withdrawal with a hamstring injury, while the Warriors dropped Ukuma Ta'ai and brought in Sione Lousi.
Locke's first was a fine piece of poaching, with the winger sliding in as opposite number Phil Graham loitered over a kick that pulled up just short of the dead-ball line.
Locke received the benefit of considerable doubt from video referee Chris Ward after diving at Graham's feet just before the ball hit the chalk.
The score was against the run of play, with the Roosters threatening with almost every touch. The Roosters made light of the awful conditions, completing their first 15 sets - and doing so in some style.
In conditions more suited to tucking the ball under the jumper, the Roosters went wide whenever possible and were rewarded with a string of breaks on the fringes.
The points their endeavour deserved eventually arrived with two converted tries in two minutes.
Mitchell Pearce stepped his way over after a rash of penalties in his side's favour and Todd Carney then finished a long-range breakout by toeing Graham's infield kick against an upright and regathering.
If there was an element of fortune about Locke's try it was levelled out by the awarding of Carney's, with replays inconclusive after what looked like an Anthony Minichiello knock-on.
The Roosters probably deserved to be further in front but instead their lead was cut four minutes before the break when Locke finished strongly for his second.
Good kick pressure from Ian Henderson forced Minichiello to fumble on his own line and the Warriors regathered possession, spreading it right on the first tackle for Locke to power slide under Graham and ground in the corner.
Carney's two successful conversions meant the Roosters led by four, but the Warriors turned with a stiff breeze at their back in the second half.
For much of the half the Warriors laboured and Shaun Kenny-Dowall looked to have killed them off when he broke from deep to set up an attack and then finished it with a powerful surge past Joel Moon moments later.
But Manu Vatuvei powered over in the corner with six minutes remaining and James Maloney's sideline conversion meant the Warriors were right in it at the death.
Up stepped Locke, who won the race to a midfield grubber and toed ahead expertly before diving bravely at the base of the post. He ended up in hospital being checked for a possible dislocated hip, leaving his teammates and the crowd of more than 20,000 to celebrate for him.
