'Men against boys': Todd Payten's grim assessment of Cowboys' performance in Roosters thrashing

Cowboys coach Todd Payten admitted after Sunday's 42-8 belting at the hands of the Roosters that his side was "bullied", while captain Tom Dearden described his individual performance as "horrible".

"We got bullied. It was men against boys there for a little bit, and that's concerning," Payten said in his press conference.

A host of Roosters players turned in brilliant games, including James Tedesco, Mark Nawaqanitawase, Billy Smith, Connor Watson and Naufahu Whyte, as the Tricolours piled on eight tries and kept the Cowboys to two.

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Nawaqanitawase, the former Wallabies flyer, has now bagged three doubles in the NRL since arriving at the Roosters, while Smith also scored two tries in the Allianz Stadium match.

There was a 10-minute period between the 47th and 57th minutes in which the Roosters piled on four tries, crossing through Smith, Nawaqanitawase, Tedesco and Daniel Tupou.

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The Tedesco try, described by Nine caller Brenton Speed as "one of the tries of the year", came in the first set after a kick-off.

The play started in the Tricolours' half of the field, the ball was touched by eight Roosters players, and Tedesco scored after swooping on a Sandon Smith kick.

Unfortunately for Roosters fans, Smith suffered a knee injury while being tackled mid-kick. He left the field and didn't return.

The Roosters also lost Siua Wong to a knee injury.

Alarm bells started ringing in the Cowboys' coaches' box in just the fifth minute, when Roosters prop Lindsay Collins shot through the weakest of defences to score the first try of the game.

The Maroons forward burst through a gaping hole between Griffin Neame and Jordan McLean. Only Neame got a hand to him, but not even he provided an ounce of resistance.

While Dearden and Jeremiah Nanai backed up for the Cowboys after Wednesday's State of Origin II, Reuben Cotter and Reece Robson were given a spell.

But Payten refused to use the absence of Cotter and Robson as an excuse.

"No, it's not an excuse. Far from it. Nup. Not a contributing factor one little bit," Payten said.

"Look at some other teams across the competition; they're handling it perfectly and we've done so in the past. So, irrelevant."

Asked at the start of the press conference what went wrong, Payten zeroed in on errors in yardage.

"Without sounding like a broken record, [we were] putting too much pressure on ourselves again," Payten said.

"Three yardage errors early in the game — one after three minutes, second one after seven — puts us straight on the back foot. So we're leading the competition in yardage errors. It puts far too much pressure on our [defence], and there are moments where we could be better there, but we're just having to do too much and giving the opposition field position week after week. It's the same thing at the moment."

Dearden only had five kicks for 173 metres, and neither of the two Cowboys tries were set up by the Maroons' new halfback.

Fullback Scott Drinkwater shouldered the bulk of the kicking duties, kicking seven times for 248 metres.

Additionally, one of Nawaqanitawase's tries was scored off an intercepted Dearden pass.

The young No.7 was playing on the back of a badly beaten forward pack and, as Payten alluded to, was let down by a multitude of errors in yardage.

"The body felt good. I was ready to go," Dearden said when asked how he pulled up from Wednesday's Origin win with Queensland.

"I was really disappointed in my performance. I thought I was horrible tonight."