Bulldogs bite at Devils

It didn’t all go the Bulldogs’ way with the under 18s pipped by the Roosters line-up and the Hot Doggies narrowly outdone by the She Devils in league-tag play. 

The Bulldogs were classy in attacking raids and provided a polished defence, keeping the Devils scoreless in the second half. 

Tom Taylor and Daniel Cronk were cutting incisive lines through the Narooma pack with some excellent advances putting the ‘Dogs on the front foot early. 

The entire line was making good movement, sweeping play wide and advancing hard to provide strike opportunities. 

A telling sign was the try count at full-time with eight individual try-scorers from the Bulldogs’ pack. 

Zak Mikula was strong running at the Narooma line, while Ryan Becker shook off jeers from Devils supporters with a rousing try down the left side. 

Corey Schafer and Rhys Cunningham were combining well through the middle with Phil Johnson providing support on the right. 

Despite some early scoring by the Bulldogs, it didn’t all go there way as the huge Narooma fullback provided some troubling runs down the right edge. 

As the Bulldogs bunched in to stop the threat, the Devils used their immense speed to capitalise on some widening gaps on the left edges to match the hosts score early.

A late try before the break meant the Bulldogs were leading into the second period.  

A good talk at half-time by coach Nathan Heffernan provided motivation for the line-up that promptly began denying all of Narooma’s attack and setting up its own attacking raids. 

The Bulldogs took complete control of the match to secure four tries in the half and keep Narooma out of the points. 

Good kicking by Corey Schafer and Callan Sinclair extended the Bulldogs’ lead with the full-time siren sounding at 44-18. 

Despite an 12-8 loss to the Narooma She-Devils, Hot Doggies captain Lauren Kidd praised her team’s efforts and those of coach Simon Scott on Sunday. 

“I couldn’t be happier, obviously I would have loved to beat them, but all in all it was great play,” she said. 

“We’ve been working on drawing the defence and trusting our wingers to support the centres when we break the line to make metres and it has paid off for us.”

She said both tries to the Hot Doggies came off the wing with Steph Wallace scoring a double and the team was “getting more confident in our abilities and getting quicker, spreading the ball wide.”

She said the four-point spread to a competition powerhouse was an outstanding effort by the team and she credited Scott on his work with the team at training and on game day.