Dragons clash just what we need

Having lost to a side expected to battle it out for this year’s wooden spoon, Canterbury coach Kevin Moore claimed a meeting with NRL premiership contenders St George Illawarra was just the tonic for his ailing side.

Under siege Newcastle produced the upset of the opening round when they held off a fast-finishing Bulldogs, with Moore left lamenting a lack of focus from a team which was expected to challenge for this year’s title.

Facing a trip to WIN Stadium to face the Dragons – who started the year in stunning fashion as they disposed of Parramatta – Moore said he far less concerned about his side’s mental approach.

“I think it’s a positive for us (playing the Dragons), you’ve got to get back on the horse,” Moore said.

“We were disappointing last week, we don’t want to hide from that fact so going down to Wollongong on Friday night against a team that started tremendously against Parramatta last Friday night is a great challenge for us.

“They took up where they left off last year and we were hoping to do that but we didn’t – we were disappointed the attitude wasn’t where it needed to be.”

While the Bulldogs conducted the usual post-mortem on Monday, skipper Andrew Ryan said he was still scratching his head trying to figure out exactly what went wrong against the Knights.

“It’s a bizarre one because our trial form was good,” Ryan said.

“We worked hard for each other in the trials … but unfortunately the handling errors and all those little things we like to pride ourselves on, they just weren’t there last weekend.”

The Dragons put on a masterclass in doing the little things against the Eels as they came up with a miserly three errors for the entire game.

Knowing the Bulldogs would be hurting from their loss to the Knights, and with the sting of last year’s controversial encounter between the two sides no doubt still fresh, Dragons skipper Ben Hornby said his side was preparing for a backlash.

Last year’s only meeting between the two sides ended in dramatic circumstances when a refereeing error denied Bulldogs centre Jamal Idris a match-winning try.

“They’re too good a side for that,” Hornby said when asked if the Bulldogs could put in a shocker two weeks running.

“We have to go out there and perform like we did in the first round, hold the ball and try and build from there.”

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