After leading Sydney Roosters to premiership glory last year, star halfback Mitchell Pearce appears to again be hitting top form at the right time of the season following Saturday night's 24-12 defeat of Melbourne.

With the premier trailing Melbourne 12-6 at the 65th minute, Pearce took control of the match to score a try and lay on two others in a performance Roosters coach Trent Robinson said was his most composed of the season.

"I thought Cooper Cronk owned that first half but Pearcey owned the second half and that is what we needed — to match Cronk in his decision making," Robinson said. "That comes down to halves and Pearcey stood up there. He had some good variety there and really good control over our team, and some really nice kicks there, obviously a try and just really good control over our sets.

"I could hear him, there was a bit of a change during a set just to get us back on track, so that is good signs for Pearcey."

Roosters captain Anthony Minichiello also praised Pearce, saying: "He was outstanding; I thought he controlled the second half really well. I thought he chose his options really good  [with] his passing game and his kicking game there at the end, so I thought he was great." Pearce scored a try that both teams admitted turned the match in the 65th minute when he swooped on a loose pass from Cameron Smith to Sisa Waqa and outpaced Billy Slater as he ran 30 metres to score from a Storm scrum win.

The former NSW Origin halfback then secured the win for the Roosters eight minutes later with a perfectly placed grubber kick for Aiden Guera to score before winger Daniel Tupou's finished the scoring with his second try in the 79th minute.

Tupou knocked on from the kick-off after Pearce's try and Robinson said the fact the Roosters held out the Storm was also a defining period of the game as they had earlier conceded a try to Billy Slater from a re-start following a Maloney knock-on after a 44th minute penalty goal.

"It probably wasn't our best performance in some areas but I thought they were confident throughout that second half, they worked really hard in attacking yardage and then defended well so there were some good signs but some things that we need to improve on as well," Robinson said.

"I think we have put ourselves in a really good position, we have secured top four tonight and I think you can see that there is really good confidence just in the way the guys are playing in both attack and defence.

"Some of those parts weren't good enough tonight. There is some fine tuning to be done but I like the attitude of the guys at the moment."