Easter Bunnies run riot in one-sided Good Friday clash
FOR 25 minutes it looked like Bulldogs fans were set for a very Good Friday. Instead, it’s going to be another long weekend for the blue and white brigade after they fell apart following a sin bin and one of the most sickening head clashes ever seen on a footy field.
The Bunnies will walk away with the two competition points after they kicked clear to win 36-16, but they have issues of their own as they looked way off the pace until Damien Cook turned the game on its head.
The nippy No.9 scored two tries in as many sets to turn a 6-0 deficit into a 12-6 lead before the Bunnies made it three tries in five minutes when Alex Johnston scored untouched in the corner after he’d already had one disallowed.
Cook then capped one of the best games of his life when he scored the first hat-trick of his NRL career when he strolled through some soft defence from a scrum. The race to be Kangaroos hooker at the World Cup just got a lot more interesting between him and Harry Grant.
The blitz masked what had been a poor start to the afternoon. The Rabbitohs looked slow, disinterested and clunky with the ball, but the whole complexion of the contest changed when the Bulldogs were rightly reduced to 12 men.
The Bulldogs started Friday’s game with plenty of aggression in defence and looked threatening in attack, albeit with limited opportunities.
But they undid all the hard work with a slew of penalties before referee Gerard Sutton eventually lost patience and sent Jeremy Marshall-King to the sin bin for slowing down the ruck.
There have been some ugly head clashes in rugby league, but few as graphic as the one between Bulldogs teammates Chris Patolo and Josh Jackson, the two forwards clashed heads while making a tackle.
Jackson’s face was covered in blood but there was more concern for Patolo who had to be helped from Accor Stadium on a medicab. In a positive sign, he was able to walk to the vehicle.