Before Friday night, the Roosters had won just one of their past 13 games against the Storm.

Meanwhile, more broadly, no other team had a worse record over the past three seasons (one win from 15 games) against the sides who finished inside the top three than the Tricolours.

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It makes the Roosters’ 40-0 demolition job of the Storm in the second half all the more staggering and according to premiership-winning forward James Graham, it puts the rest of the NRL on notice.

Mark Nawaqanitawase scored four tries in the 40-10 win, rocketing to the top of the NRL try-scorers list.

But while Nawaqanitawase’s first-class finishing caught the attention of former Storm halfback Cooper Cronk, it was the Roosters’ second half as a whole which really caught Graham’s eye.

“That sends a message to the rest of the competition, if they can play with that level of discipline and that level of skill and execution for 80 minutes,” Graham said on Fox League.

“I don’t think they maybe get away with that in a finals game, but if they can match two 40-minute performances like that, they are a threat in this competition.

“We know it was an understrength Melbourne team, but those stats around how the Roosters have struggled against the Panthers and Storm would have been on their mind.

“So for them to get that out of the way before finals, the pundits and the fans will talk of the players that were missing and highlight that, but that 40-point performance in the second half, I think that counteracts that.”

The Roosters will be up against it in the finals, with it looking increasingly likely that they will finish eighth with a potential trip to either Brisbane or New Zealand on the cards in the opening week.

But Friday’s win was the kind of one that could galvanise the playing squad according to Graham.

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“I think that if you’re in that Roosters dressing room you’re up and about,” Graham said.

“When those big games come around the corner, you’re going to draw on this experience and say, ‘Look, we managed that performance’.

“And Melbourne, for all the players that they were missing, that’s arguably their best defensive display of the season in the opening 40 minutes. Nobody saw that coming in the second half. So that’s got to fill them full of confidence going into September.”

Cronk, meanwhile, believes the Roosters found the blueprint to their success in the second half after storming back with 40 unanswered points.

“Whatever Trent Robinson said at half-time, he needs to bottle that and then rehash it for the next five weeks,” Cronk said.

“They are a chance of winning the competition because the first set after half-time was powerful, was direct, it was straight.

“They made heaps of meters, and they actually put up an attacking kick at the end of that to put pressure on Papenhuyzen and he thought, well they’ve come out like they shot out of a cannon here and off the back of that, some of the numbers in the second half are crazy, the Roosters 22 completed sets to the Storm five.”

While the odds are stacked heavily against the Roosters winning the premiership from outside the top four, Cronk said the Roosters are finding form and timing their run to perfection.

“Think about the Roosters at the start of the year,” Cronk explained.

“It was bad start, but then their last two wins out of three games, lost last week against the Eels, but before that it was a brilliant win against the Bulldogs, and then they’ve done it again against the Storm.

“Yes the Storm were depleted, but it was Craig Bellamy’s 600th, so there was a lot to play for Melbourne.

“So the Roosters have built the season throughout and are playing some of their best football the last two wins they’ve had.

“And then they got the arch rivals Souths next week, so they almost dropped their chances of playing finals last week. They’ve just dramatically improved them tonight.

“Some (ill-)discipline and some errors from the Storm, but you have to say the Roosters went after the game.

“The Roosters went to the contest and said, ‘We’re going to handle destiny in our hands and play finals’.

“So it wasn’t as if they got handed on a platter in the second half. They just dominated to a point that Storm could not get out of their own end, and the Roosters just kept coming.

“They found a crack on that left side defensively and the Roosters kept going there.”

The Roosters now play the Rabbitohs in a blockbuster clash on Friday night to seal a finals berth and not many teams will want to face them in this sort of form.