James Graham suffered a worrying head knock while Mitchell Pearce and James Maloney won the battle of the halves in the Sydney Roosters' 24-10 win over Canterbury at ANZ Stadium on Friday night.
Graham spent most of the game on the sidelines after suffering a concussion in the 27th minute while attempting a tackle on Aidan Guerra.
The Canterbury captain's head collided with the Roosters back-rower's hip and after spending several minutes on the ground, he was taken up the tunnel and did not come back on.
The English prop was making his return from a four-week suspension and his loss was immediately felt.
The Bulldogs had been leading 4-0 when he was concussed, but after Graham went off, the Roosters ran in two quick tries to take a 10-4 halftime lead.
Roosters hooker Jake Friend produced a beautiful cut-out ball to put Daniel Tupou over and four minutes later Roger Tuivasa-Sheck made the Bulldogs defence look ordinary as he sliced through Trent Hodkinson and Tony Williams close to the line.
Pearce and Maloney controlled the game better than their Bulldogs counterparts and made a strong case for them to replace Hodkinson and Josh Reynolds as the NSW Origin halves.
The Roosters went up 18-0 when Sam Perrett made a mess of a monster Pearce bomb which came down a metre from the Dogs tryline and Mitchell Aubusson mopped up the mess.
A try to Guerra put the icing on the cake for the Roosters before Moses Mbye scored a consolation try for the Bulldogs.
The Roosters received a scare late in the game when star Michael Jennings went from the field and sat on the sidelines with ice on his knees.
Roosters coach Trent Robinson said Jennings was taken off because of muscle tightness and he was not in doubt for Origin I on May 27.
While he stayed out of the discussion about who should be the NSW halves, Robinson said he was pleased with the way Pearce and Maloney had dealt with the pressure-filled build up.
"I think they've done well and there were a lot of questions around them tonight," he said.
"I think (NSW coach Laurie Daley) would have known before tonight what his gut feeling was and I think he'll go with that."
Bulldogs coach Des Hasler said Graham had also picked up a knee injury in his tackle on Guerra and would be assessed on Saturday.
He said Graham's exit from the game was no excuse and they were guilty of too many fundamental errors.
"We didn't play well," Hasler said.
"When you complete only eight of 16 sets in the second half, make one-one-one misses, a high error count, trying to play a Roosters side that's in good form on 39 per cent possession. But all of those things are self-inflicted.
"You've probably heard that sort of stuff in media conferences before but we have got to get that sorted if we want to do anything in this competition."
