ANDREW Selwood’s try in injury time and Nigel Staniforth’s resulting conversion saved Orange Emus from a second straight Blowes Clothing Cup loss on Saturday afternoon, the greens squeaked home by two points against a very impressive Bathurst Bulldogs outfit.
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Trailing Bulldogs 11-6 with regular time gone, Selwood barged through some flimsy Bathurst defence one-off the ruck to level things up before Staniforth nailed the conversion from 15 in from touch to seal the 13-11 win.
Talk about getting out of jail, especially considering it was the only time Bulldogs’ wall even looked like being penetrated.
The Bathurst side kept the reigning champions out for all but the entire game, forcing the greens to stay in touch via Staniforth’s boot and even holding on while they were one man down for 10 minutes after Sam Roberson was sin-binned in the 67th minute.
“We did get out of jail there, although I thought we controlled the game well in the last 10 minutes,” Emus coach Paul Ringland said.
“We were expecting that kind of Bulldogs performance and they definitely delivered, their defence was amazing and their energy was great.
“Once we scored the try we were pretty confident Nigel would kick it, he’s done it plenty of times for us before.
“Obviously we’re pleased with the win but we have a standard we like to set performance wise and I don’t think we reached it. We’ll take plenty out of it though.”
Bathurst coach Brian Roberson cut a dejected figure after full-time, lamenting the result which, by all rights, could easily have gone the other way.
“It’s very disappointing that result, I felt we had the better of the game for most of it but full credit to the Emus guys for sticking in there,” Roberson said.
“The number of penalties (Bulldogs conceded) turned us around too often and the field position from those penalties was telling in the end.
Those penalties Roberson mentioned, there was 33 of them in total, forcing the game to have a distinctly stop-start flavour to it.
Bart Bogart gave Bulldogs a 5-0 lead inside the opening two minutes, before Kurt Weekes extended it to eight and then 11 with penalty goals in the eighth and 17th minutes.
Emus had virtually zero ball up until that point but finally settled into their work after Staniforth got his side on the board with a 26th minute penalty goal.
He cut the deficit to five – at 11-6 – with another penalty goal in the 36th minute. The score remained the same until Selwood’s last ditch effort.
Despite a lack of points in the second period the meagre Endeavour Oval crowd was on tenterhooks as Emus began controlling the tempo of the game and dominating field position.
As Bulldogs had in the opening half, the greens camped inside their opponents’ half – in fact, the majority of the game was played at the ground’s northern end.
Emus continually attacked Bulldogs and the Bathurst side continually held the hosts out, until a potential turning point in the 67th minute when Sam Roberson was sin-binned for repeated infringements on his own line.
Emus couldn’t cross despite having the extra man though. In the 75th minute they blew a three-on-one overlap down the left edge and looked likely to have cost themselves a win.
Weekes had a chance to push Bulldogs’ lead to eight in the 76th minute, which in hindsight would’ve won his side the game, but missed, and four short minutes later Selwood barged over.
ORANGE EMUS 13 (Andrew Selwood try; Nigel Staniforth conversion, 2 pens) def BATHURST BULLDOGS 11 (Bart Bogart try; Kurt Weekes 2 pens)