It’s only 56km from Bondi to Penrith, but the shell-shocked Sydney Roosters will bunker down in camp before Sunday’s desperation NRL clash with the Panthers on Sunday.

Following Monday night’s gut-wrenching loss to South Sydney, coach Brian Smith has taken the unusual step of organising a camp ahead of a cross-town match.

The Roosters will head to Rooty Hill on Saturday as they attempt to blank Monday’s nightmare from their minds and save their season.

The tri-colours are five points out of the top eight with seven rounds remaining, and captain Braith Anasta said his side could only blame themselves for their dire predicament.

On Anzac Day, St George Illawarra scored two late tries to steal victory from a heartbroken Roosters and Anasta said Monday was similar.

Souths scored two tries in the final two minutes to pull off one of the most remarkable finishes in history, and Anasta admits only time will tell how the Roosters deal with the pain.

“I suppose we’ll find out,” said Anasta on Friday.

“It was a pretty physical game so we’ve spoken to the coaching staff and we’ve given ourselves a bit more recovery than usual.

“I think mentally and physically, we probably needed an extra day off or just a bit more spare time than we usually have which we have done. But our preparation now will be amped up.

“We probably handled (the Souths game) similarly to how we did against the Dragons and you can’t afford to do that. If anything, we need to be a bit critical on ourselves for not learning from the Dragons match and we need to make sure we learn from the Rabbits’ one.”

The Roosters have only put back-to-back victories together once this season, but must win at least six of their seven remaining games to even be a chance of making the finals.

However, Anasta said his side couldn’t afford to dwell on missed opportunities.

“Back-to-back is not even in the thought process at the moment. It’s getting that one win and getting some momentum from that,” he said.

“We’re not looking back too much but we’ve probably let two opportunities go the last two weeks (draw to Cronulla, loss to Souths) to start that momentum and give us that chance of making the semis.

“It’s up to us to be strong enough and I believe we can.

“We have to win this week – there’s no second chances for us.”