Match Details
Match Date	19th Aug, 2018
Opponent	New Zealand Warriors
Result	Win 27-26
Coach	Dean Pay
Captain	Josh Jackson
Venue	Homebush (ANZ Stadium)
Crowd	9,688
Referee	Jon Stone Gavin Badger

The dinner plans had already been made for Lachlan Lewis’s 22nd birthday. A meal at Mr Wong in the city on Sunday night as good a way as any to mark the occasion. Until, that is, he decided to celebrate it another way, with a match-winning role in a gritty Canterbury victory.

As birthday presents go, a field goal to clinch an NRL game in the closing stages trumps a new pair of socks or jocks. It is particularly noteworthy, too, when it is your first extra point at any level, ever.

Time seemed to almost stand still at ANZ Stadium as left-footed Lewis, standing 33 metres out and 10 metres to the left of the uprights, sized up the ambitious attempt with scores locked at 26-all and one minute and 35 seconds left on the clock. The emerging Bulldogs playmaker, making his seventh topgrade appearance yesterday, has a knack for that. His unorthodox kicking style, putting boot to ball with a peculiar walking delivery, gives the impression of reducing the game to slow motion.

Whatever the illusion, the sight of the ball sailing over the cross bar, even if it only just made it, was an attractive one for Lewis and Canterbury. His previous shot at a field goal was in under-20s for Canberra when he missed one from 10 metres out as a 17-year-old. “That was my first ever field goal,” he said. “I’ve probably missed about three from in front. “It’s funny ... I was practising field goals at the start of the week with the physio and he was telling ‘you’ve never kicked a field goal, even at training’. So it was pretty lucky and I guess that breeze pulled it over in the end.”

Lewis scored a try and set up others to Adam Elliott and Josh Morris as well as providing the one-pointer that clinched the Bulldogs’ seventh win of the season and reduced the danger of them collecting the wooden spoon. They are now two points clear of the Cowboys and Eels at the bottom of the table with two games to play, and ahead of Manly on points differential.

“We’ve had our challenges this year, we’re a young developing team,” Bulldogs coach Dean Pay said. “Over the last month we’ve played some decent footy and got a few results. They’re learning each and every week and getting a little bit better.”

It wasn’t the perfect outing for Lewis. A failure to find touch after a penalty in the final 10 minutes was blow for Canterbury, and then a missed tackle on Adam Blair with four minutes remaining allowed the Warriors to square things up.

He takes pride in being a better defender than his unimposing frame would indicate – he held Blair up over the line 14 minutes earlier – so he was relieved to make amends. He later paid tribute to Pay, whose office he says he spends “half the week in”.

“Dean’s personality is like an aura,” Lewis said. “He won’t say too much, but he’s working a lot with the young spine, just giving off that experience, the little nuances to the game. In Dean’s office I don’t spend as much time watching video as I do just talking about the flow of the game.

‘‘I’m only 22 today. I’ll get bit erratic out there and a few of the boys will be yelling at me to settle down. The time with the footy in my hands, you can thank Deano for that,” he said.

Canterbury had led 20-12 at halftime after Lewis crossed for his first NRL try 35 seconds before the break, putting the finishing touches on after Kerrod Holland had broke free and Will Hopoate had nonchalantly handed the ball to the young five-eighth as he met Warriors fullback Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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