Titans 22 Roosters 18

BRAD Fittler's fairytale run as caretaker coach of the Sydney Roosters was ended by a Titans side more concerned about its own feel-good story.

The newest NRL coach was finally felled by the newest team, 22-18 at Carrara Stadium yesterday, in a marathon match that lasted nearly two hours, with nine attempted tries referred to the video referee, Chris Ward.

After five games unbeaten since he took over from Chris Anderson - a record for a stand-in - Fittler was philosophical as the streak was broken and the Roosters' finals hopes fell into the "mathematical chance" category, along with Gold Coast's.

"Not as good as the other ones," the Roosters coach replied when asked how he felt about this result compared with his five-star start.

"It was an ugly game … I thought even though it had no rhythm, I still think we had opportunities to get points there just before they skipped away to that 12-point lead."

That came in the 51st minute when Anthony Laffranchi barged over to make it 22-10, ultimately enough to earn victory in a rain-soaked battle.

"We've got to keep winning, we've got to start watching for other sides to win and lose," Fittler said. "Hopefully, the boys don't think about it."

No chance. That's all the Roosters boys were thinking of afterwards.

"Now it's a lottery," Roosters five-eighth Braith Anasta said of his team's top-eight ambition. "Before it was in our hands and now it's not - it still is in a way, because we've got to win our last two games, but we've got to hope other teams lose as well."

Angry Roosters winger Amos Roberts, denied twice by Ward, said his second disallowed try, in the 73rd minute, was a four-pointer and could have turned the contest.

Ward ruled that Roberts didn't have control as he slid over the ball following an Anasta grubber, but the winger said he forced it with his elbow. "The second one, I thought if you get any downward pressure on the ball from your elbow to your hand on the grass, it's a try. I was filthy at the call.

"I got downward pressure on it with my elbow. I wouldn't have put my hand in the air, saying it was a try for nothing, I wouldn't have celebrated for no reason at all. It could have turned the game, it would have made it 22-20."

Not much went the Roosters' way from the start. The signs were there, telling Fittler it wasn't to be his day: the dark clouds hovering; the Titans scoring from their first set; and the talented rookie Setaimata Sa suffering a terrible hip dislocation in the sixth minute.

Sa, 19, was taken immediately to Gold Coast Hospital and put under anaesthetic. The injury will sideline him for the year.

Suddenly the Roosters were fighting 17 men with one fewer and had to rely on young halfback Mitchell Pearce to step in from the bench and fill Sa's void. But Pearce, who was out for five weeks with a back injury, hasn't trained under the new structures put in place by Fittler, and, while the Roosters engineered some clever moments, he and Anasta could not strike a partnership capable of outwitting Gold Coast's robust defence in time.

Anasta was disappointed they didn't play an expansive game until the final moments.

"We had to throw the ball around, but I felt we could have done it a bit earlier," he said. "I thought we let ourselves down, we could have tested them a lot more than we did and we just went away from our game plan. We let them off the hook."

The Titans led 16-10 at half-time, steered by their brilliant skipper Scott Prince.

He set up a try for Matt Petersen with a bomb within three minutes, and then a beauty for Brett Delaney in the 25th, bamboozling the Roosters with an inside step, dummy and delicate grubber for the centre to pounce on.

Like a little matador in control of the show, watched by a healthy crowd of 17,425, Prince spun his way to the line to establish a six-point buffer at the break after the Roosters had fought back with two quick tries, one to fullback Sam Perrett, who finished with a hat-trick, and the other to Anasta.

The second half was peppered with handling errors and video replay analysis of try rulings. The sides scored four tries each - Perrett grabbed a consolation with 12 seconds remaining.

"I was confident we could keep [the winning streak] going," Anasta said. "It's disappointing, it's a backward step … but it was always going to happen, wasn't it?"