Less than a quarter of the way into Saturday night's NRL qualifying final at the Sydney Football Stadium, Ken Ellis had every right to think he was a jinx.

Ken had made the 17,000km trek from England to see son Gareth line-up for Wests Tigers in their clash against Sydney Roosters, and to say the opening 20 minutes didn't go Gareth's way would be an understatement.

Not once or twice but three times in the opening 13 minutes Gareth Ellis was denied the opening try of the match.

First Todd Carney knocked the ball from his grasp as he reached out to score in the seventh minute, then just minutes later the hard-running backrower was held up.

Finally Ellis upheld his side of the bargain by chasing down a Robbie Farah grubber only for the video referee to make it third time unlucky when he took the try off the Englishman after teammate Benji Marshall was ruled to have thrown the first punch in a fight with Mitchell Pearce.

While the lack of points provided costly in the final washup - with Wests Tigers pipped 19-15 in golden point extra time, Ellis may have more pain following his next involvement.

With the Roosters on a rare raid on the Tigers' line, Ellis collected Carney with a high tackle which was put on report.

Anything greater than a grade one careless high tackle charge will leave Ellis in danger of missing the Tigers' next finals encounter.

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