Raiders score impressive win over Roosters

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Canberra Raiders v Sydney Roosters

The Raiders have defied a year of fade outs late in matches to hang on for victory in arguably one of their best performances in years to beat a strong Roosters side 14-12 at GIO Stadium.

Canberra had a near flawless first half, shutting out the Roosters at the break.

In the eighth minute an Austin chip was knocked dead by Ferguson, who could've taken the catch cleanly and earnt his side a 7 tackle set. Instead they had a drop out and three tackles later the Raiders went to the right side, where a brilliant cut-out pass by Abbey put Rapana over in the right corner untouched. Williams nailed the sideline conversion.

Try as they might, the Roosters could not breach the Raiders defensive line. The Raiders effectively shut down the impact of Mitchell and Tedesco, which made it easier for them to single out and manage the impact of Cronk.

The only scoring of the half came from the boot of Sam Williams as he kicked penalty goals in the 16th, 30th and 37th minutes to give the Raiders a 12-0 lead at the break.

Just three minutes after the resumption of play, the Roosters got on the board after Tedesco dummied out the back to Mitchell before hitting the lead runner Corder, who ran into a huge gap to score on the left side. Mitchell added the extras.

Just on the hour mark, Canberra gave away 4 straight penalties in just over a minute on their own line. The defensive workload became too much as Radley steamed onto the ball, changed direction as he ran towards the line and then reached out to plant the ball on the line to score a great solo try. Mitchell converted from right in front to level the scores.

With ten minutes remaining, the Roosters gave away a penalty and Williams kicked an impressive goal from almost 40 metres out and just to the left of the posts.

The lead looked short lived as Havili dropped a pass cold as he was set to take the first hit up off the restart, however the Roosters couldn't add to their score, despite throwing a kitchen full of whitegoods at the Raiders line, Canberra hanging on for an impressive 14-12 victory.

Next week the Raiders host the Rabbitohs while the Roosters host Brisbane.