It’s not the West Tigers ’fault that a significant portion of those who tuned in for Friday evening’s 6pm game were interesting to see their opponents.
Most of the 15,124 people who packed at Leachhart Oval were only interested in black and amber hosts and returned home happy after a 34-22 victory which was probably a much tougher fight than needed.
The Tigers won’t have to worry about their 2022’s rarest qualities – skills – and the third win of the year achieved with a little help from their in-house opponents.
At their best, the Tigers are a team that is complete and can make life difficult for opponents. Against this Canterbury team, that’s what they had to do.
They starved the occupying dogs and could play with relative conservatism with confidence that it would be rewarded in the end.
With 15 minutes left at the start of the second half where their opponents made life very difficult, it was close to a regular win like the Tigers. This was the highest point throughout the year.
The Bulldogs have been at the center of the NRL narrative all week and their opening match under the interim supervision of Mick Potter shows many problems but probably some solutions. This, too, was the highest point they scored in 2022.
The catastrophic policy of making Josh Jackson a playmaker was Trent Barrett’s first bloodbath – perhaps faster than Brent Naden, who left the old coach within 24 hours to start the game for the Tigers.
Jacob Kiraj and Aaron Scoop have scored a lot on their left ends, and Kiraj has been involved many times more than the right to be a winger in particular. His 19 touchdowns are second only to Matt Burton and more than halfback Kyle Flanagan.
For the first 40 minutes, the dogs looked as bad all year as they did – really saying something – but in the second, they showed much more, for at least an hour before the steam ran out.
The Bulldogs couldn’t help themselves – they rarely did – and coughed the ball with duty as they got it within any reach of the Tigers’ line in the first half.
The Bulldogs will not be able to do what they wanted to do with the ball unless they get football in the first place. In the first half hour, they managed to capture only 32% and at the same time, put themselves behind three attempts.
The first came this season through a tried and tested route, Luke Garner, who crashed near Joe Ofahengo and reached for the line.
Kyle Flanagan got all the traffic on the Bulldogs’ right defensive end, but stood up for it: he denied Garner with a great tackle, only to make it irrelevant in the next play with a great disguised pass for Jackson Hastings for Starford Two. A
Flanagan would deny Garner again with a great tackle, but unable to make any of the attack, the ball kept bouncing back into the dog’s right corner. The next attempt scored more, but a fluid backline move saw Brent Naden – as blue and white as Monday – put Ken Maumolo into the fray.
The Canterbury attack was flying wild to get something together. Only Jacob Kiraz, in his second game of top grade, seemed likely to break a tackle.
When Matt Burton kicked for himself in the third tackle in their own 40-meter line, there was more than frustration about the play. Moments later, when the dogs break their first line, Burton throws the ball into contact and the moment disappears.
The other West Tigers’ attempt along the right edge ended halfway through. It was a scrum play as far as one could imagine: Hastings to the line, Toya at the back and Maumolo at the corner post.
It was 18-0, and not only that because the Tigers again tried in vain to find someone to score through Hastings, Madden and Hastings. The Dogs came up with an intense knowledge for the second half that something needed to change and quickly.
For the first time, they played with an element of frustration: Burton kicked Toya near the line, Kiraj chased hard enough to force a dropout.
Their first point comes from the first part of the field position, Tevita Pangai Jr. wreaked havoc when running sideways before being offloaded to Burton.
It goes on and on: Jeremy Marshall-King was sleeping with the markers and bursting through the center, before Matt Duffy – with a gut wound-up to get up in support – appeared inside. He was caught, but the Tigers were forced to hold back and Jackson Hastings found himself in the bin.
Marshall-King will be rewarded for the smart play that created the situation, pushing from the dummy half for another Bulldog attempt. Within seven minutes of the second half, the deficit went from 16 to just six.
It wasn’t rugby league rocket science. Canterbury completed their first six sets, running hard and creating pressure. On the 7th, they scored again: Burton held the Tigers’ line flat-footed and gave a long pass to Aaron Scoop, who left Kiraz for the most deserving first attempt in the NRL.
The Tigers needed a spark and the dogs provided it for them. Aaron Scoop became a little too enthusiastic about his tackling technique and tipped Starford Toa, earning ten minutes on the sidelines.
As a result of the penalty, Garner again crashed to the right end of Canterbury and was stopped, but the recent Tigers acquisition put pressure on Fa’manu Brown for his first NRL effort since 2018. Madden is returned to kicking and the gap is left out of the converted. Try
Madden’s boots will seal the deal. With the speed of the Bulldogs line failing them, five of the eight young men fell behind to finish the race.
It was time for Aaron Scoop, back from the bin, to get another one in the northwest corner – the seventh of the night in the same section of the ground – to raise the highest score of the year for the Bulldogs. It doesn’t matter, but it does give Belmore some hope for the near future.
Nu Brown added another as he went second, keeping the scoreline even brighter, sending fans happy to be soaked in the mountains.