Jake Friend and Jared Waerea-Hargreaves appear to be in the sights of furious Sydney Roosters coach Brian Smith, who says ill-disciplined players will face the chop.

Smith was livid about a 6-0 second-half penalty count against the Roosters as they received a scare from South Sydney on their way to a 40-29 win in the NRL season opener.

The coach laid most of the blame for the penalty count squarely with his players.

"We need to buck up and there's a couple of blokes in our team who really need to buck up," Smith said.

"... There's a couple of them are sailing very close to the wind about staying in our team because penalties just kill you."

That couple are seemingly hooker Friend and aggressive interchange forward Waerea-Hargreaves, who statistics show each gave away two penalties in the second 40 minutes.

"Six-nil, you just can't survive against any team," Smith said.

"Every team is good enough in this comp to whack points on in a hurry if you concede or if you're sloppy with the ball or defensively, but the biggest one of those is penalties.

"Concede penalties and perish."

The other two second-half penalties were conceded by second-rower Mitch Aubusson and captain Braith Anasta, who received his spray publicly after a crucial kick-off sailed out on the full.

"There's not much you can do if you kick it out on the full, eh?" Smith said.

The coach and Anasta were also unhappy with what they believed was a big 10 metres.

"It was massive at times," Smith said. "They were just going to the next line instead of measuring out 10 metres.

" ... It's just too hard to defend like that for any period of time and especially if you whack a 6-0 penalty count on it."

Meanwhile, Dally M medallist Todd Carney is expected to be assessed again on Monday after suffering a minor aggravation of his groin injury.

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