The Roosters shut down the Dragons finals hopes for 2016

v BYE

The Sydney Roosters have officially ended the St George Illawarra Dragons finals hopes with a huge 42-6 victory at Allianz Stadium.

Going into the game just needing to win the remaining three matches this season, the Dragons never looked to be in the game at all as the Roosters increased their win count to 3 from their last 4 games and jumped into 13th place. With Finals not in their sights this year the Roosters were looking to keep other competitors out of the finals or make it as hard as they can for them. As such, it was an action packed game from start to finish.

Some of the main players to stand out in this game were Latrell Mitchell, Blake Ferguson and definitely Daniel Tupou, the latter who had his best game of the 2016 season. The Roosters were the better side from the get go, with Mitchell Aubusson and Ryan Matterson scoring for the Roosters and Gareth Widdop scoring for the Dragons in the first half.

The Roosters couldn't have had any better luck with the Dragons forced into back-to-back drop outs early on, and the Dragons defence slacked letting a brilliant try from Mitchell Pearce's boot to set up Mitchell Aubusson for the evening's first points. Trailling 14-0 leading into the halftime break, the hopes of the Red V faithful rose when Gareth Widdop went in to score, the Bunker however took forever to decide what the decision was, and finally called it a try.

At halftime the hooter rang but it didn't stop there, the ball went through at least 17 pairs of hands until time was called off and the Roosters were up 14-6 against the Dragons.

The second half couldn't be any worse for the Dragons, they hardly saw the ball - except when they were taking drop outs. They had another 28 points put on them to crush their finals hopes - after a Taane Milne mistake they paid for their constant errors when some tricky moves and a couple of passes put Daniel Tupou in space with just Josh Dugan to beat and scored in the corner. Five minutes later Connor Watson burst through and set up Blake Ferguson and at 24-6 the result was no longer in any doubt.

With the salt rubbed deep into the wounds, a minute later Blake Ferguson latched onto a Sam Moa offload to put the Roosters right into the attack, and for the 'Pearce' de Resistance, the Roosters' half grubbered through to set up Tupou's second of the afternoon and shut out the game.

The home side finished 42-6 victors in front of 11,000 fans, and will take their 2016 farewell tour to the Shire next week when they look to damage the minor premiership hopes of the Sharks on Saturday night. The Dragons have two dead rubbers to finish the season, next Monday against the Eels at Pirtek Stadium, then the following Saturday against Newcastle at Kogarah.