Sydney Roosters prop Mark O'Meley believes his side's narrow loss to the Gold Coast could nevertheless be a turning point as the NRL's bottom team try to match the speed around the ruck of their rivals.

The Roosters, who have now lost five straight games and eight of their last nine, have been criticised in 2009 for their slowness in adapting to the two-referee system and for the lack of speed in their play.

Representative forward O'Meley has borne the brunt of much of that criticism and found himself out of the top grade earlier in the season.

But he returned to his metre-eating best in Saturday night's heartbreaking 24-20 loss to the high-flying Titans, a match even Gold Coast coach John Cartwright didn't think his side deserved to win.

"We're starting to adapt to the speed with two refs and with penalties," O'Meley told AAP.

"I think we're getting better, we showed that last week and again this week.

"We were right on our toes, we were supporting each other. We were burning the ruck up like teams have been doing to us so I think we're taking baby steps but we're getting there."

O'Meley, who put his good form at Bluetongue Stadium down to playing at his Central Coast stomping ground, said the Roosters had attempted to come to terms with the new policing of the wrestle much earlier.

"We had all the inputs you could in the off-season off the refs but it didn't seem to help us," he said.

"We just kept watching how everyone else is playing and listening to our coaching staff."

Despite a season that has yielded just three wins, the Roosters were upbeat about their improvement on Saturday, and in last round's 38-18 loss to premiers Manly.

"You look at our last couple of weeks and it has been really good," captain Braith Anasta said.

"We're moving forward. There's a good feel around the place, there's a lot of confidence around from the boys.

"We've just got to make sure we don't let this loss affect us because overall it was a great performance.

"We've just got to make sure we acknowledge the improvement and acknowledge how well we are playing."

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