Roosters 34 Sea Eagles 12

As far as the Sydney Roosters were concerned, this one was personal. Manly had beaten up on them for too long and if they wanted to be able to get out of bed this morning and look in the mirror with pride, they had to do something about it at Sydney Football Stadium yesterday.

The result was a Roosters win that came off the back of two ordinary performances from them in losses to Gold Coast and Canberra. It is amazing what the right source of motivation can do sometimes and if you have lost your past six clashes against a team - including the past three 42-0, 56-0 and 30-8 - there should be no shortage of it.

After the win, Roosters skipper Craig Fitzgibbon said the team's record against the Sea Eagles was a big topic of conversation among the players at training during the week.

"It was personal, yeah," Fitzgibbon said. "We'd been beaten by plenty to nothing in our last three games against them, so there was plenty of motivation there. It came up at training. Footballers are pretty proud. They had been smashing us and they were still a very good team, so we knew that if we didn't aim up we were going to get hammered again."

Fitzgibbon's fellow Roosters concurred. "That [the record against Manly] was a big factor," said Willie Mason. "It was embarrassing. I think it was 100-0, pretty much."

Mark O'Meley added: "You need triggers, things to motivate you, and they gave it to us earlier in the year, so that was a pretty good reason."

Manly were worse off than the Roosters when it came to unavailable players who would normally be in the full-strength 17. The Sea Eagles were minus Jamie Lyon, Jason King and late withdrawals Glenn Stewart and Anthony Watmough, while the Roosters were without Anthony Minichiello and Setaimata Sa. But that difference wasn't nearly big enough to stop the Roosters from taking plenty out of the win. "We know they'll be better if we play them again in the finals," Fitzgibbon said. "But I'd like to think we'll be better, too. It [the win] removes an element of doubt for us. If they had beaten up on us again today, it could have been an issue for us next time. I don't know if we can go all the way and say it's a clean slate again after today, but it sure helps."

Their start was what did it for the Roosters. It was opportunistic and brilliant. A clearing kick from Manly fullback Brett Stewart hit a charging Fitzgibbon and Roosters halfback Mitchell Pearce kicked the ball off the ground and into the in-goal for centre Mitch Aubusson to score.

Then the Roosters shifted the ball quickly left and winger Shaun Kenny-Dowall scored. Next, Manly lock Steve Menzies lost the ball and Roosters winger Amos Roberts raced away to score.

The game was only 13 minutes old and the Roosters were leading 18-0. It is pretty hard for any team to come back from a deficit like that. Manly gave it a shot. They came back to 18-6 and were one quick pass away from scoring out wide to make it 18-10, and even after falling 24-6 behind they had chances to score the next try, which, if taken, would have left them with plenty of time to try to bridge the gap. But it wasn't their day.

"Our start was very disappointing," Manly coach Des Hasler said. "There were two or three tries scored against the run of play, but a good side will make their own luck. The late changes we had to make didn't do us any favours, but I still think we could have forced our way back into that game a bit. But we kept coming up with silly errors."

One person in the crowd was apprehended by security for throwing a plastic bottle on to the field - apparently in the direction of referee Jason Robinson, but clearly missing him - about 10 minutes before half-time. Robinson didn't even know about it until told later and was not perturbed.

The Roosters had planned for the crowd to be able to take to the field after the players had left following full-time and a second siren had sounded, but the people swarmed on at full-time to back-slap the players in a throwback to the old days. The players confessed to being a bit surprised, but nevertheless enjoyed the experience.

"There was a bit of grabbing on the jersey, a bit of excitement out there," Fitzgibbon said. "It was pretty cool."