Sydney Roosters' coach Trent Robinson has been left impressed by his side's ability to stave off the Parramatta Eels' comeback, while also questioning Jared Waerea-Hargreaves' trip to the sin bin.
The Roosters' enforcer was sin binned shortly before halftime in the contest for a high shot on Parramatta Eels' second-rower Shaun Lane.
The New Zealander has since been hit with a Grade 1 dangerous contact charge and will be facing a fine.
Robinson admitted there was high contact, but said he was unsure where the NRL were at with high tackles being sent to the sin bin.
"I think his head hit his chest. He did get him high, but he was just going forward at him. When Jared does stuff, he does it with force. It was sort of a hard one. I've seen a couple of stills of it where Shaun [Lane] sort of drops height and lands on his chest, so it's not even point of shoulder. It's sort of... I'm not sure where those ones are at," Robinson said during his post-game press conference.
Waerea-Hargreaves' sin bin wasn't the only moment of controversy during the game, with Parramatta edge forward Kelma Tuilagi also facing ten minutes off the park for a dangerous throw.
There were some suggestions Tuilagi could have been sent off for the tackle on Roosters' prop Lindsay Collins, but Robinson said he thought that would have been too much.
"To be honest, I thought it was ten. It's hard to judge where we are at with that at the moment to be honest. It was hard to judge the roll and other people's involvement," Robinson said.
The match saw the Roosters bolt out to a 16 points to 0 lead during the first half, before Waerea-Hargreaves' injury allowed the Eels to hit back, eventually claiming a two-point lead.
The momentum would shift again though, with Parramatta then falling by the wayside of the Roosters who ran on a couple of late tries to take the two competition points.
Robinson said his side having to fight for the momentum of the game was a positive after plenty of big wins this season.
"You've got to always celebrate winning games, so that's the first thing," Robinson said.
"You want to learn how to win in different styles, but obviously, you want to go on from the start and finish that game off, but we have on a few occasions.
"So anyway, it ended up how it did and it was good for us to handle that pressure with a comeback and finish the game off. That's a positive sign for us as well.
"I think we have won by big margins, but then we have also ended up losing two-point and four-point games a lot out of the losses we have had, so it was nice to finish that off."
Robinson explained how his side lost their ability to tackle, as well as their discipline around Waerea-Hargreaves' sin bin and struggled to get things back until Junior Paulo was interchanged off.
"They went to short sides and offloads through [Junior] Paulo and [Bryce] Cartwright and it just shifted the momentum. We obviously went down to 12 men, but that one before halftime and then the two straight after halftime, but for about 15 minutes there we lost our tackle and lost field position. Our discipline and our tackle went out at the same time, we just didn't have the ball and the momentum shifted.
"I would have liked to have grabbed the momentum back quicker. If we could have done that it would have been a bonus, but to be honest, I saw Paulo get interchanged about 15 minutes in and we got our tackle back, but sometimes you don't arrest it and it keeps going, so I was happy for us.
"I thought Naufahu Whyte, Spencer [Leniu] and Lindsay [Collins] did a really good job coming back on."
The Roosters move to fifth spot on the table with the win, holding an eight and six record, while the Eels sit in 15th spot with just 4 wins from 14 games.
