Match Details
Match Date	5th Aug, 2013
Opponent	St George Illawarra
Result	Win 39-20
Coach	Des Hasler
Captain	Michael Ennis
Venue	Kogarah (WIN Jubilee Oval)
Crowd	12,846
Referee	Gerard Sutton Henry Perenara

Josh Dugan might have been the most dominant player on the field but not even his near unstoppable one-man show could stop a fastfinishing Canterbury side at WIN Jubilee Oval on Monday night.

The match swung constantly, eventually finishing 39-20 in favour of the Bulldogs. Canterbury started stronger, taking 12 minutes to score two tries before St George Illawarra scored 20 unanswered points, including three tries in nine minutes either side of the half-time break.

The Bulldogs finished on top with four tries of their own in 17 minutes including two to prop Sam Kasiano.

Tony Williams finished with two tries as well in a strong second half.

Whatever Dugan just re-signed for, double it, triple it, quadruple it. In fact you could almost give him the entire St George Illawarra salary cap – such was his dominance.

His performance was mesmerising as he celebrated the rich fouryear deal he signed on Friday against the side who made a lastgrasp effort to steal him.

If Dugan was the Dragons best, Kasiano was the Bulldogs’ after the man mountain resurrected a Bulldogs side who were on the verge of a shock upset, he was placed on a report for a high tackle on Dugan late in the game.

The NSW fullback scored two tries and set up another but it wasn’t enough. The victory keeps Canterbury’s top four hopes alive and moved the Bulldogs away from the bunch of teams competing for a top-eight spot.

Dugan broke the Dragons’ 205-minute point scoring drought at WIN Jubilee Oval with two solo first-half efforts.

Despite making 35 more tackles than their opposition, the Dragons remarkably held a two-point lead at half-time. The Bulldogs’ control with the ball was near faultless in the opening 40 minutes, completing 94 per cent of their sets. But it was off the ball where they struggled to enforce the stranglehold they had on the game.

Ill discipline allowed the Dragons to march up the field, with seven penalties.

Halfback Trent Hodkinson regathered his own grubber kick to score the first try of the match, before Dragons centre Nathan Green was penalised for an apparent high shot.

That penalty was matched by an equally soft missed tackle from Dragons centre Daniel Vidot to allow Josh Jackson to shrug past to score the Bulldogs’ second try.

From there the Bulldogs looked disjointed in attack as they missed the spark of injured fullback Ben Barba, who will be out for at least four more weeks.

Josh Morris was solid in his switch to fullback to allow Sam Perrett to return to the wing.

Hodkinson’s boot almost laid on the first try of the second half, when a swirling bomb was allowed to bounce with Dale Finucane getting over the try line from a Mitch Brown pass only to be denied by Dugan’s boot after fumbling the ball.

And then it fell to Dugan to spark the Dragons again. With some sleek footwork, he got on the outside of the Bulldogs’ left-edge defence of Brown and Tim Lafai to get the pass to Green, who juggled the ball before giving Jason Nightingale an untouched passage to the try line.

When the Dragons scored six minutes later, it completed a remarkable three-try haul in nine minutes. Vidot captured a clever long ball – just out of the fingers tips of Perrett – from Adam Quinlan to score to give the Dragons a 20-8 lead.

That’s where the joy ended for the home side as the Bulldogs rushed to the lead through tries to big men Kasiano and Williams, on their way to scoring 31 unanswered points.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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