Facing his old club in his first game for his new club, Roosters signing Brandon Smith has admitted he was a “little shaky” in his tricolours debut, and rated their performance against Melbourne “pretty poor”.
Playing in dummy-half, Smith played about 20 minutes and set up Victor Radley for his second half try.
Speaking after the game, Radley said facing his old teammates for the first time was “a bit weird”.
“It was kind of hard seeing all the medical staff, and all the physios on the sidelines – that was tough,” he told Fox Sports.
“It was weird hearing all the names they were calling out for all the plays, I knew exactly what they were doing which started confusing me … I started to forget what the Roosters plays were.”
He said while he is starting to adapt, there is still plenty of room for improvement following his first hit out. He said the Roosters weren’t taking the pre-season challenge any more seriously than they might have in years past.
“I don’t think the pre season comp really matters – I don’t even know how the points system works,” he said.
“For Robbo it’s just I guess taking what we’ve learned in pre-season, going out there and trying to execute so we can take it into the real season where all the glitz and glamour is made.
“Hopefully we can do that in the next game – I think we were pretty poor tonight.
“We played against all the young fellas in the Melbourne side and they really gave it to us, so we’ve got a lot of room for improvement.”
Smith said he was settling into life back in Sydney – he’s living in Bondi, because of course he is – and one of the key differences between Trent Robertson and Craig Bellamy pre-seasons was the massive amount of distance running.
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