SATURDAY ANALYSIS

Put this one down in your diaries: round 24, Sydney Roosters versus Penrith at Aussie Stadium. The way both teams are going, the result of that clash will decide who gets the wooden spoon.

The Panthers played on Friday night, so their second-half capitulation against Wests Tigers does not qualify for examination here. That is a fortunate thing. You remember what your mum told you - if you've got nothing good to say about someone, don't say anything. So we move on to the Roosters, where the challenge to find something good to say is just as hard. But the search turned up one thing: as heavily as the Roosters landed with their 56-0 loss to Manly at Brookvale Oval, they still had Penrith underneath them to break their fall.

Any brave talk about the Roosters still being able to make the finals surely ceases now. They just have to play for pride, try to get something out of the rest of this season and avoid running last. That way, they might be able to look forward to next season with some degree of optimism. Finish the season in the way they went down to the Sea Eagles and the off-season could end up looking like a bridge to further disappointment.

Manly coach Des Hasler was quietly confident in the lead-up to the match that his team would solve the problems responsible for the back-to-back losses to the Bulldogs and St George Illawarra. They solved them, all right. The Sea Eagles were devastating in attack, but the most satisfying thing was that after conceding twice as many points against both the Bulldogs and the Dragons as they had previously been averaging this season, they regained their desperation in defence.

The Roosters, on the other hand, were awful. It looked from very early on like they were going to cop a hiding, and that was how it turned out. Coach Chris Anderson called it unacceptable. Captain Craig Fitzgibbon said it was deflating. Their fans are probably still in mourning today.

Penrith are last on the competition table with 10 points and the Roosters second-last on 12. But the Roosters have easily the worst points for and against differential of any team, with minus 197. It's even 93 points worse than that of the Panthers. That's what makes the Roosters so vulnerable to finishing last.

Way up at the other end of the table, Melbourne keep motoring along to the finals. They remain four points clear at the top after coming from 8-0 down to beat South Sydney 12-8 at Central Coast Stadium, in what was always going to be a difficult game for the Storm.

The Rabbitohs have got plenty going for them defensively, and the Storm had some key players out injured and others backing up from the State of Origin game on Wednesday. Souths, with no players involved in Origin, had enjoyed an uninterrupted preparation. But the character of the Storm is such that they refused to let go of the game after they had fallen behind.

North Queensland continued their recovery by beating the Warriors at Dairy Farmers Stadium. After being smashed in back-to-back games by the Roosters and Melbourne, the Cowboys have beaten the Raiders 28-24 and now the Warriors 18-12. They aren't back to their best yet, but they are on the way.

We'll know they are really back when, after getting away to a big lead at home as they did against the Warriors, they go on to drill the opposition.