The Sea Eagles thumped the Roosters 36-8 at a wet Brookvale Oval in Round 22 last year.
Manly raced to a 12-nil lead at halftime and piled on five more tries in the second section to overwhelm the visitors, who took until the 63rd minute – with Manly leading 28-nil – to register their first points.
Much of the Roosters’ misfortune was of their own making – they completed their sets at an atrocious 55 per cent compared to the Sea Eagles’ 80 per cent. Consequently they were forced into making a whopping 68 tackles more than their opponents and found it hard to get any sort of field position, restricted to just 960 metres all up. They also committed 14 errors.
Meanwhile nine Manly players registered triple-figure metre gains, headed by fullback Brett Stewart (130 metres).
William Hopoate and Steve Matai each scored two tries with halfback Daly Cherry-Evans, captain Jamie Lyon and back-rowers Glenn Stewart and Tony Williams scoring one apiece.
The scoreboard could have been a lot worse had Lyon been on target with the boot – he was successful with just two of his eight attempts at goal.
Nevertheless the Roosters crossed for one of the tries of the year with just 18 seconds left on the clock; in an 80-metre advance the ball swept through a dozen pairs of hands before Mitchell Pearce chip-kicked wide into the hands of unmarked winger Phil Graham who dived over for some small consolation.
