The Roosters’ wheels came off at exactly the wrong time. Can they go back to the future?

In the “before time” of four weeks ago, when Sam Walker still roamed the field without a moon boot, the Roosters were premiership favourites.

As James Tedesco notes, you don’t exactly forget “the best defensive performance of your season”.

The Tricolours’ stirring 12-6 upset of Penrith on August 13 wasn’t just their most recent victory. It was the club’s biggest win in years, finally shaking the chokehold Ivan and Nathan Cleary had held them in – to the tune of an 11-1 record – in the six-again era.

They rattled Nathan like never before, regularly rushing up on the champion No.7 given Isaah Yeo was sidelined, shutting down Penrith’s attack with goal line defence (occasionally illegal) that harked back to their halcyon 2018-19 premiership-winning days.

Ten days later, the Roosters lost to the Tigers . They’re still yet to fully recover.

Walker went down the following week against the Dolphins, and Trent Robinson chose to cut his losses and rest nine of his best players for the local derby against the Rabbitohs, which they lost by 30.

That Panthers breakthrough capped an eight-game winning run, in which they conceded a miserly 12.8 points a game (the best record of any side over that period).

The rhythm that went out the window in a bludging Sunday afternoon, 25-24 loss to the Tigers briefly returned against the Dolphins a week later.

But both losses were set up by alarming defensive lapses – the kind Penrith have taken and beaten teams senseless with for years now.

The Roosters coughed up three tries between the 19th and 26th minutes to the Tigers – two down their right edge and another directly from a fumbled pass on their own line.

The Dolphins peeled off three tries in nine minutes before half-time, targeting Daly Cherry-Evans and Rob Toia’s suspect decision-making on the Roosters’ left.

“When things don’t go our way, we’ve struggled to get back to what we do well,” Tedesco says – having been sidelined (and rested) for all bar the Dolphins game in the past month.

“We can’t let things snowball, and in those games, one bad thing has led to another. So I think that’s on me as captain and the leaders to help fix that up against Penrith. Things aren’t always going to go perfectly. But you can’t let that slide for 15-20 minutes either. You have to move onto the next job and recover.”

How the Roosters’ attack recovers without the enigmatic Walker and adjusts to the probable scrum-base combination of Daly Cherry-Evans and Hugo Savala is key.