Newcastle officials believe Kurt Gidley will not run until Wednesday after the NSW utility withdrew from Sunday's 18-10 NRL win over the Sydney Roosters at Ausgrid Stadium.

Gidley has a hamstring strain but was named in the Blues 20-man squad for the State of Origin series decider in Brisbane on July 6.

"I'd like to think he'd be up running by Wednesday of (this) week, that's what our physio's telling us," Newcastle coach Rick Stone told reporters after his depleted side downed the disappointing Roosters.

"It will be up to their staff now but our staff have been working pretty hard over the last 48 hours to see if they can do the best they can in a short period of time to hand Kurt over to the NSW physio and medico staff."

With the Knights' chief playmaker Jarrod Mullen already on the sidelines, Gidley's absence was expected to give the struggling Roosters a boost as they looked to finally shake their 2010 grand final hangover.

Instead, representative halves Todd Carney and Mitchell Pearce were outplayed by virtual unknowns Ryan Stig and Tyrone Roberts, the Knights' fifth and sixth choice halves when the season began, who have a total of five NRL games between them.

Mullen, Gidley and Ben Rogers are injured, while rising star Beau Henry was released midseason to join Gold Coast.

"They were good, they're far from perfect but it's a big job," Stone said of the youngsters.

"One's played one game, one's played four games, a 20-year-old (Roberts) and a 21-year-old (Stig).

"They handled themselves pretty well for the most part ... the boys believed in them which is important."

The Knights took a further blow in the first half when former Queensland backrower Neville Costigan suffered a knee injury.

He will have arthroscopic surgery this week and Stone is hopeful he will only miss next Sunday's clash with St George Illawarra.

The Roosters had looked like they would take advantage of Newcastle's injury woes when centre Justin Carney beat NSW winger Akuila Uate to score a soft try in just the eighth minute.

But the visitors' defence proved consistently softer and Newcastle led 12-4 at the break after tries to centre Junior Sa'u and winger Peter Mata'utia.

Uate all but sealed the win in the 62nd minute when he carried three over the line before Anthony Minichiello gave the Roosters some hope in the 75th, breaking the club's tryscoring record with his 105th.

Subdued Roosters coach Brian Smith admitted his men had not turned up with the intensity needed.

"(We were) patchy at best and I thought we just didn't quite work hard enough to get ourselves where we needed to," he said.

The Roosters still have just four wins in 2011 and sit two wins outside the top eight, the only bright spot a return to the goalkicking duties for Dally M medallist Todd Carney.

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