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In the lead up to yesterday’s match between the Sydney Roosters and the Canterbury Bulldogs, both Braith Anasta and Nate Myles last week predicted their former club to bounce back after below par losses to the Knights and the Dragons.
Judging by those comments, it seemed the Roosters were going to be well prepared to dish up the answers necessary to combat the many questions Kevin Moore’s men were going to pose against the Bondi Junction club.
But from the moment Anasta put the ball out on the full from the kick off, the Roosters were left shaking their heads in embarrassment as the Bulldogs finally kicked off their premiership campaign in scintillating style.
Canterbury ran in 12 tries to three in a virtuoso display of football that will now put all NRL teams on notice – the Bulldogs are back and in a big way.
Centre Josh Morris at times toyed with the edge defence of the Roosters, scoring four tries and constantly getting in behind the often reliable Sam Perrett.
New Bulldogs recruit Steve Turner arguably set the offensive tone for the home side early on courtesy of his lethal runs out of dummy half, while Jamaal Idris was back to his devastating best scoring two tries and setting up numerous others.
Halfback Brett Kimmorley taught Roosters no.7 Mitchell Pearce a thing or two about guiding a team around the park, with the 33 year old demonstrating enough of the form and skill to warrant a place in the NSW Origin side this year.
Whilst Pearce tried hard in a forlorn Roosters side, it seems the former Origin halfback is yet to learn how to withstand the lure of scoring from every play when his team is considerably behind on the scoreboard.
No doubt Pearce was not the only one to hit the panic button for Brian Smith’s men, as evidenced by the massive error count the Roosters racked up against the Bulldogs.
Unlike the Tigers last week, Kevin Moore’s men know not only how to hold on to a lead, but to build on it consistently.
Key players such as Ben Hannant, David Stagg, Andrew Ryan and Michael Ennis will constantly toil away for the full eighty minutes and grind their opposition to the ground.
The Bulldogs mixture of great discipline and clean handling contributed heavily to the Roosters massive workload without the ball.
In one of the more lopsided tackle counts in recent memory, the Roosters were forced to make over 100 more tackles in comparison to the meagre 147 the home side made in total.
Indeed not many teams can come defend for such extended periods let alone a Roosters side that still possess the most fragile ruck defence in the NRL.
It seems the debut of the Chooks’ major off season signing Jared Wearea Hargreaves cannot come fast enough for a team in desperate need of some defensive steel in the middle of the park.
No doubt it will be interesting to see how the Roosters back up next Friday night against the Brisbane Broncos – themselves coming off a thrashing against the New Zealand Warriors.
Whether or not they can rival the way the Bulldogs revived their NRL season in stunning fashion remains to be seen.
What is certain however surrounds the fact that Canterbury have once again come through adversity, and are now set to remind the opposition why so many pundits had them as 2010 premiership contenders to begin with.