Bathurst Bulldogs run in 13 tries to thump Orange City 77-7

Heading into Saturday’s penultimate round, Bulldogs not only needed a bonus-point win over Orange City to take first place, but needed Orange Emus to lose to the Dubbo Kangaroos and fail to earn any points.

In the end Emus beat the ’Roos 28-17 to seal the minor premiership, but Bulldogs’ efforts at Ashwood Park still pleased coach Dean Oxley.

The 13-try performance saw Bulldogs display the sort of attacking rugby Oxley has worked hard to implement.

“I’m happy with that, I really wanted to have an attacking focus this year and the boys bought into that. We had been a very dour team, a very predictable side, and scoring that many points shows that we are doing something different this year,” Oxley said.

“We’ve done what I wanted to achieve in that regard, but my ultimate goal is to win the grand final and we haven’t got there yet. We’ve still got more stages to really achieve, but we’ve put ourselves in a position to have two bites of the cherry if we need it.”

As well as some of the slick passing, line breaks and bullocking runs up the the middle from his forwards, Oxley was pleased to see the effort his side brought to the breakdown.

“The breakdown was a focus because that’s where we can be disrupted. If we don’t focus on that area of the game, we don’t have the ball, so that’s why we really worked hard on the breakdown,” he said.

From the get-go it was obvious the Lions were in for a tough afternoon as they were driven back by a dominant scrum and constantly pressured – scrumhalf Thomas Nell being tackled in-goal.

Still, the Lions tried to muscle up in defence and even managed to force errors as Bulldogs looked for a way through.

But on 13 minutes, Bulldogs spread the ball wide from a line-out and the speed and strength of Harry Webber saw him open scoring.

Three minutes later Will Oldham showed his pace as the winger scored the first of what was to be a hat-trick, and when an attacking raid triggered by a Harry Peacock line break resulted in Josh Weekes crossing, it was 17-0.

From there Bulldogs didn’t look back. By half-time it was 39-0 and the points continued to flow when play resumed.

There were tries that came from pure strength close to the line, such as Joel Harper’s effort, a hit and spin effort from Brad Glasson and a Peacock chip and chase pearler.

The Lions did have something to cheer about when number 8 Trent Glanville barged his way over with 25 minutes to go and Barton Young’s conversion struck the upright but enjoyed a kind deflection.

That made it 60-7, but Bulldogs responded with three more tries to close out the contest.

“It was good to see them go on with the job. I spoke to them [at the half-time break] about erasing the first half and getting back to a nil-all focus and build the points in the second half, don’t assume that they are going to come,” Oxley said.

“The goal was to try to score more points in the second half than we did in the first half and we just missed out on that, but I was happy with the way they stuck with what we needed to do.”

Meanwhile, Cowra beat Forbes 55-33 to move into third spot and will host the Platypi in the minor semi.