James Tedesco has starred as Sydney Roosters came from behind and thwarted Justin Holbrook’s return to Allianz Stadium with a hectic 38-24 defeat of Newcastle.
For a third consecutive game, the star-studded Roosters trailed at half-time only to claw back victory, and will finish round seven higher on the ladder than at any point this year.
Shifted to left centre amid Dylan Brown’s return from injury, Fletcher Hunt nabbed a hat-trick and made two try-saving tackles to put last year’s wooden spooners up 24-12 at half-time on Sunday.
It is becoming a pattern. The Sydney Roosters look poor for forty minutes, trail at halftime, and then — led by the player who has been the best fullback in the world for the better part of a decade — they come back so emphatically in the second half that the first half feels like a distant memory by the time the final siren sounds.
Against the Cronulla Sharks in Perth last week they trailed 22-12 at halftime and won 34-22. On Sunday at Allianz Stadium against the Newcastle Knights, they trailed 24-12 at halftime and won 38-24. The scoreline is different. The story is the same. And at the centre of both stories — doing the things that great players do in the moments that matter — is James Tedesco.
The numbers from Sunday’s performance are not the numbers of a man who has been spoken about as a player in decline, or a captain under pressure, or a fullback whose best years are behind him. They are the numbers of someone playing the best football of his 2026 season at exactly the moment his club needs it most.
270 run metres. Three line breaks. Three try assists. One try. Tedesco to the rescue. Again.
A second half for the ages — and a pattern that rivals now fear
The second half statistics are stark. The Roosters scored 26 unanswered points. The Knights scored zero. Newcastle, who had looked so controlled and clinical in the first forty minutes, managed just 46 per cent of possession in the second half as the Roosters’ superior depth and fitness began to tell.
Nawaqanitawase was sensational on the right edge — scoring twice, including a second try in the 69th minute from a beautifully constructed Robson-Cherry-Evans combination that cut the Knights apart. The winger now has ten tries in his last nine games at Allianz Stadium. A number that will follow him into every conversation about what the Roosters are losing when he departs for rugby union at season’s end.
Cherry-Evans, meanwhile, was the architect — orchestrating the second-half attack with the calm authority of a player who has been in these situations a thousand times. His dummy in the lead-up to Nawaqanitawase’s second try was pure class. His communication with Walker and Tedesco across the second term was the connective tissue that turned individual brilliance into a collective demolition.
Three wins in a row — and what it means
Forty-eight unanswered second-half points in two consecutive games. The opposition scoreless in the second half in back-to-back weeks. A Roosters team that looked, through the opening rounds of 2026, like a side searching for an identity — now looking like a team that has found one.
That identity is built around a simple, almost brutal proposition: give us the second half, and we will take the game. It is built around Tedesco’s engine — his ability to run for 270 metres, break three defensive lines, set up three tries and score one in a performance that most fullbacks in the competition could not match across an entire season’s worth of good games. And it is built around the quiet, relentless authority of Cherry-Evans and Walker in the halves — two men who, when the game is in the balance and the pressure is highest, make the best decisions.
“Massive performance from the skipper to help guide the Roosters to a win. Posting 270 run metres with three line breaks and three try assists — as well as a try of his own — the fullback was a cut above.”
— NRL.com match report, Round 7 2026
Robinson speaks — and the words land differently now
“We weren’t good enough in that first half and we knew it. But I trust this group. I’ve always trusted this group. The second half showed you what we’re capable of when we play our football.”
“That’s the best I’ve seen Teddy play this season. His second half was extraordinary. He took the game by the scruff of the neck and that’s what great players do.”
Three wins in a row. Forty-eight unanswered second-half points across two games. A captain finding form at exactly the right moment. A coach who, three weeks ago, was being asked questions about his future — now looking like the same coach who led this club to three premierships and fourteen seasons of sustained excellence.
The Roosters are not the finished article. They are still capable of poor first halves, of errors, of the kind of flat opening quarter that left them trailing 24-12 on Sunday and needing James Tedesco to drag them back into the contest. That is a problem they will need to solve before September.
But the second half — the ruthless, scoreless-for-the-opposition, forty-minutes-of-something-genuinely-special second half — is becoming a calling card. And if you are a rival coach looking at the NRL top eight right now, that calling card should make you very uncomfortable indeed.
