One of the competition's heavyweights are officially on the ropes, after Roosters coach Trent Robinson confirmed that Luke Keary had suffered a suspected ACL injury.
It's brutal news for the Roosters, who also lost forward Lindsay Collins and Keary's halves partner Lachlan Lam prematurely during their 26-16 loss to arch-rivals South Sydney.
"Lindsay's obviously pretty clear, he's ok there. Lachy I think it's medial and Kez it's ACL," Robinson said in the post-match press conference.
"The way that we played the game was really disappointing and then you layer that on top. You can imagine how it's going to be in there."
It's a series of brutal blows for the Roosters, who are already currently without key players such as Victor Radley, Sam Verrills, Boyd Cordner, and Jake Friend.
With Lam and Keary missing at least the short-term future, the Roosters spine faces a total overhaul going into their next few games.
Young gun Sam Walker and former Dragon Drew Hutchison seem the likely halves pairing going forward – but Robinson could throw a curveball and move centre Joseph Manu to five-eighth, or even give a shock debut to boom rookies Joseph Suaalii or Ronald Volkman.
https://twitter.com/nrlphysio/status/1375409843507322880
"That's not for now, give us a little bit of time there," he said when asked about next week's halves option.
"My job here is to sit here and explain what happened out there tonight to some people who were disappointed in what they saw from the Roosters side."
Robinson said his team played 'good, open footy' in the past two weeks but weren't ready for the test that came with facing one of the competition's heavyweights.
"We were ill-disciplined in defence … we weren't good enough or competitive enough with the ball to get out of our own end and put it in the right spots.
"We tried to leapfrog the hard bits to get to the pretty bits and we didn't get there."
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