The sun was beating down on Brooky for the first afternoon footy of the 2023 season when a bruised and battered Manly outfit rocked up to host the Bulldogs. They’d had a rough end to the end of 2022, with seven straight losses and the departure of Des Hasler, and they hadn’t won a season opener since 2013, even though they hadn’t lost a season opener on the northern beaches since 2007 either. Anthony Seibold was fresh in the coaches’ chair, up against Cameron Ciraldo, who was making his debut as a lead coach with the Canterbury side.

Of course, the biggest question on everyone’s mind was how Tommy Turbo would fare. Ruled out of play since May the previous year, he’d spent the preseason in Philadelphia with Bill Knowles, the reconditioning expert who’d also worked with Latrell Mitchell and Ryan Papenhuyzen. DCE, too, had missed the trial games, after returning late from the World Cup, while Cooper Johns was making his Manly debut by stepping straight into the five-eighth jersey, due to Josh Schuster’s calf injury against the Chooks during the Pre-Season Challenge.

On the other side of the Steeden, all eyes were on Viliame Kikau and Reed Mahoney, the Doggies’ two biggest recruits of the year. Mahoney absolutely shone, scoring the only Canterbury try of the game, making 52 tackles and doing a mountain of defence on his line, but Kikau hadn’t quite synced up yet, and paid the price for some rusty blue and white organization, most notably when he was forced to take a kick up the short side. Matt Burton also had a quieter game, unable to muster the fearsome force of his boot as he did last season.

For the first half, the Doggies put up a resilient fight, keeping the score locked at 6-6 until the thirty-fifth minute, when Kyle Flanagan was sent to the bin for the softest of pushes. Manly promptly scored on either side of the break and from there settled into a gradual acceleration that saw Reuben Garrick rack up 14 points to hit 802 in total, Turbo contribute 174 metres off 16 runs, two linebreaks, a try and a try assist, and DCE rally the troops with an absolute masterclass of kicking, passing and vision, culminating with the first hat trick of his NRL career.

Despite their domination on the scoreboard, the Sea Eagles started slow, taking a good ten minutes to even glimpse their Brookvale groove. Burton launched the kickoff, Turbo took his first carry of the year, and Josh Aloiai had the first charge of the Manly season. Nothing much came of the opening set though, as Lachlan Croker opted to kick early from dummy half, and from inside the forty, only to launch it straight down the middle, meaning Max King was over halfway by the middle of the next set, thanks to a trademark carry from the Foxx.

Burton was just outside the thirty by the time he put boot to ball for a mid-range bomb, and while Kikau scooped it up after Christian Tuipulotu missed it, he did so offside downtown. With a full set in Canterbury territory, Manly had a chance to restart the game, but instead they seemed desperate to achieve position above all else, as the forwards held sway. A trio of fairly conservative runs laid the platform for Jake Trbojevic to take the Steeden up the middle, where King came in with a shuddering tackle to rob the set of any momentum.

DCE extemporised a decent chip to the right, and yet Tuipulotu missed it once more, this time in contest with Ado-Carr, as Burton scooped it up. Jurbo now delivered a pair of revenge tackles, the first a beauty on Ryan Sutton, low and hard enough to hang the ex-Raider in the air while Croker muscled in and slammed him on his back. Yet with the Manly hooker stripping the footy in the process, the Dogs had their first set in the Sea Eagles’ end, as Jurbo led them again by hitting King hard in an effort to quench the blue and white flow.

Nevertheless, the Doggies got six again on the brink of the red zone, off a ruck error from Haumole Olakau’atu, and now settled into the most dynamic set of the game so far, all of it played on the left edge. The first sweep ended with Paul Alamoti, who couldn’t break through or offload, making Kikau the next man to take a crack at the line, which he parlayed into an offload out to the left – long, to be sure, but still true enough to ensure that King was back at the ten by the time the second phase was over. It felt like a gap was slowly starting to emerge.

Sensing that opportunity somewhere amidst the Manly line, Mahoney remained on the left, and sent out a wide one for Burton, who was halted by a DCE-Olakau’atu combo, before drifting back across the ruck to give Fa’amanu Brown beside the left padding. There was one play left, and sure enough they swept, only for Kikau to make his second mistake of the match by coughing up a cut-out from Burton that was just a fraction forward. In the first of many agonising moments for Canterbury, the footy grazed Kikau’s fingers, and headed into touch.

It was a pretty anticlimactic end to the fastest set of the game, and so Burton was barking orders at the troops as Manly ground in to work it out of their own twenty. Croker got them rolling by glimpsing a break in the line from dummy half, and then winning a holding down penalty from Sutton as he piled on with Raymond Faitala-Mariner. The last time the Sea Eagles were down this end the forwards had done all the work, and for a moment it looked like they might take it straight up the middle again, with Taniela Paseka and Jurbo leading the charge.

They probably would have done better to stay conservative, at least for this set, since no sooner had they swept left on the third play than Tommy floated it marginally forward to Brad Parker at the twenty. It was an even blander turnover than the end of the last Canterbury set, and the Dogs were clearly keen to elasticise with ball in hand again, shifting it from right to left sidelines midway through the count, and changing direction a few times from there until a nice inside ball from Brown put King over the thirty, where Paseka only just closed the space.

Burton hadn’t soared with the boot yet, but his mid-range grubber did the job here, spilling off DCE and tumbling over the backline for the first dropout of the game. Daly launched a moderate kick to his own forty, where the turning point for Manly now came in the form of a terrific pair of tackles from Parker. In a game where the forwards had done most of the heavy lifting for the Sea Eagles, Parker played like he was part of the tall timber, making plosive contact with King on tackle one, and then lifting Sutto clean off his back on the very next play.

Even better, he forced the knock-on, in exactly the individual display of strength and commitment that the Brooky boys needed at this moment. It was no coincidence that Johns took his first bomb at the end of the set, and while Hayze Perham collected it on the full, Manly had started to wake up, summoning their strongest defensive stint so far. The Dogs were only at the thirty by the time Jurbo took another monster shot at King, three plays in, and Olakau’atu did even better, depositing Sutton square on his back on the very next tackle.

Burton tried to reverse the rhythm with a 40/40 but ended up granting Manly their best position so far when the angle was too wide. Turbo was really looking dangerous now, breaking away from a couple of tackles midway through the set before King finally brought him to ground on the cusp of the red zone. DCE was also about to have a magnificent sequence with the boot, starting now with a skip, trip and grubber that Mahoney managed to wrestle back into the field of play with Jurbo around his waist, only for a call of knock on. 

In one of the first great challenges of the year, Mahoney sent it upstairs to show at least one of his hands had remained on the footy with each of the three impacts that Jurbo had ricocheted him off the turf. It was easily the strongest individual play of the game thus far, so Manly responded with an enormous collective effort, and one defensive pack after another. Kiraz was barely over the ten on the third, and even a big RMF run wasn’t enough to get him far beyond the twenty, thanks in part from a heroic ankle tap from Parker, who was on fire.

If Burton had just taken a clearing kick here his men might have recovered a set later, so it was confounding to see him instead shift the Steeden out to Kikau, who delivered a parodic and mutated Burton boot of his own – an ungainly lob straight over the sideline. After what had seemed like a superhuman save from Mahoney, the Dogs were defending their line once more, as Croker, Turbo and DCE started to synergise, forcing Burton to make a trysaver on the right, as Garrick also came close to breaking into open space on the other wing.

No doubt, Manly were elasticising, and DCE capped it off with a perfectly weighted grubber that trapped Kiraz in goal, Parker on his back. Mammoth post-contacts from Olakau’atu dragged three Bulldogs into the red zone, where Croker showed it, and would have put Aloiai through if not for a gutsy David-on-Goliath tackle from Kyle Flanagan. Still, Daly’s boot continued to cause havoc, this time with an oblique grubber infield, from a few metres out, that Perham only just managed to pop down with three hungry Sea Eagles converging on him. 

Manly had their second straight dropout, and Turbo was cresting, delivering a subliminal dummy early in the count that momentarily opened up a hole for Parker. Only Kiraz was there to plug it, and yet the Sea Eagles simply and sinuously swept back to the other wing, where it all came together off a slow play-the-ball from Paseka that just made the next sequence feel all the more leisurely. Croker shifted it to Daly for another grubber back in field, where Burton reached out a right hand for it, as Perham failed to change direction on the line in time too.

That gave Turbo space to dab it a second time and pop it down a beat later, Mahoney powerless to stop him all the while, in a resounding return to Brooky that also made him the first Manly player to score in six straight games against Canterbury. Yet the Dogs didn’t take long to hit back, scoring their one and only try on their very next set. Mahoney’s earlier save on the line had seemed to betoken something special from the blue and white, as did his challenge, so it felt right that he stepped into the spotlight for this fleeting moment of glory.

He was certainly rabid in defence, giving Parker a run for his money as the kickoff landed on the sideline, and getting done for an offside in the process. It felt as if Manly must score off this restart in opposition territory, and they burned with a new intensity until Olakau’atu’s inadvertent obstruction down the right edge brought it all to an abrupt end – so abrupt, in fact, that the Doggies were able to coast on its residual rhythm. Jurbo and Croker were huge repelling Averillo at the thirty, but RFM just added further post-contacts to hit the red zone.  

With a driving run from Sutton bringing them to the ten, and Burton almost busting through a low tackle from Olakau’atu out on the left, this was crisp and clinical acceleration. Mahoney capped it off by jumping straight into dummy half and grubbering towards the left post. The ball spilled up off the padding and seemed destined to catch Flanagan right on the chest, but soared over his right shoulder at the last minute without him getting a touch to it as Mahoney leaped up, secured it in both hands, and realised he was going to have to score this one solo.

The last hurdle was Turbo, who came in for a desparate wraparound tackle, squashing Mahoney against the padding, which the little hooker used as leverage to grind the footy down. Johns got hands to it at the death, but Reed had maintained just enough downward motion for this to be a try. Burton added an easy kick from right in front, and the Dogs had levelled the score, in a triumphant start for Mahoney’s season in the 9, although fate would decree this to be their only points of the evening, as Manly built to a decimating conclusion.

Still, Sutton was looking confident as he got the restart rolling with a rollicking charge, prompting an equally muscular tackle from Kelma Tuilagi, much as Croker and Keppie came together a play later to prevent RFM getting too far over the twenty. Nevertheless, Brown was tumbling over the forty by tackle four, setting up Burton for his first real end-over-ender, high enough to give the chase time to prevent Turbo from making a return from just outside his red zone. The time had come for a Sea Eagle to step up individually and silence Canterbury.

Fresh off the bench, Ethan Bullemor made a step in the right direction by palming off Mahoney so hard that he fell straight onto his back. It was enough to set up DCE for a boot in opposition territory, and yet a good dummy half run from Flanno meant the Doggies also crossed halfway on their next set, where Mahoney was inspired to make a dummy half dart of his own. Showing it once, he flicked the offload out for Jake Averillo to break both the line and the red zone, searching in vain for a way to hand it back inside to an unmarked Flanagan.

Burton now showed his captaincy credentials with two clutch plays to maintain this flow – first, a wobbly bomb to the left edge, where the Foxx tapped it back; then, a split-second strip when Bullemor scooped it up, as King was storming in for the kill. With a full set in the Sea Eagles’ ten, this had to be the consolidator for Canterbury, and for a moment it looked like they might deliver, with Perham and Corey Waddell both barging their way towards the chalk out on the right, until Brown tried to force the offload before the crossbar and coughed it up.

Desperate to lean back into the promise of the previous set, Burton made a second legal strip a few plays later, but knocked it on, and so the Sea Eagles had fully recovered from the blue and white scare with a scrum from the Canterbury forty. Parker got going with a good driving run, requiring Flanno to make a second tackle that ended up conceding six again, and Ado-Carr came close to intercepting a precarious right sweep out to Olakau’atu, in yet another tantalising glimpse in the Bulldogs night that could have been with a little more organisation.

Turbo had been responsible for the tricky pass for big Haumole, and he was just as rusty on the left a play later, when he sent a cut-out too far past Parker, leaving Garrick with nothing much to do as it sailed ahead of him and over the sideline. Manly’s combos hadn’t quite clicked into gear yet, and the visitors took advantage of this lull again on their next set, when they built enough position for Flanno to chip from the thirty, while Jacob Preston celebrated his Doggies debut across the road from his old school by popping Turbo back over the try line.

As with the dying moments of the Knights’ loss to New Zealand the night before, however, the underdogs lost some momentum now to the independent doctor, who ordered Kiraz off the park for an HIA that brought on Jayden Tanner for his Canterbury debut. A minute later, DCE skidded the Steeden towards the sideline, where Averillo showed some quick thinking to dive down and ricochet it away from touch. Despite some confident sweeping play, not much came out of the dropout, which ended with a five-man pack catching RFM with it on the last.

Manly wrestled ten metres per carry over the next set, with Koula bringing it to the twenty, Bullemor to the thirty, Keppie to the forty and Turbo to halfway, before DCE kicked a long one straight down the middle and three Sea Eagles hurried forward to meet Perham just over his thirty. Parker did well to combine with Garrick for a low shot on Flanagan, but the Manly winger conceded a ruck error in the process, and so the home defence roused themselves for a fresh set, as Croker and Olakau’atu lifted Tanner clean off the turf and dumped him down.

Waddell, too, was only permitted to make a few metres, so Burton executed some eyes-up footy with a grubber on the third. It shouldn’t have been too much of a threat, but Tuipulotu was sluggish getting there, and would have conceded a try if the bounce hadn’t careened away from the Foxx as he reached out his right arm to rein it in. By the time that Kikau scooped it up, the Melbourne export had already knocked on, in what could have been a major turning point for the Dogs, but would turn into the preface to a key momentum-builder for Manly.

The sun was emerging over Brooky as Bullemor won a penalty late in the next count off a Waddell ruck error, and Manly parlayed it into a beautiful left sweep that saw DCE and Tommy set up Garrick for a sideline grubber back in field. Turbo stuck out his left boot to rein it in, but had overrun it, and so decided on the second best option, pivoting just enough that Flanno had to put hands on his back to brace himself for impact. Apparently, it was a good enough sell from Turbo to send Flanagan to the bin, as the away crowd raged in the stands.

Things could have been worse here, since there was originally a question of penalty try, but the Doggies had still lost Kiraz and Flanagan in the second quarter, meaning their right edge was in total disarray as the Sea Eagles consolidated across all parts of the park. DCE drew it up the right, Turbo tried to break through on the left, and Johns set up Bullemor to bring it to the crossbars. Finally, they prevailed with their second trip to the left, where Turbo shed all his residual rustiness in one of the most confident passes and stances of the game thus far.

Receiving a lovely wide ball from Croker, he basically stood in place, drew in Perham, and flicked it out for Tuilagi to send the assist straight in front of Averillo’s chest and put Garrick across all but untouched. The Manly 5 converted from the same spot, curving it around the left post to make it six, before Burton tried to tap into his superboot for the first time this afternoon, only to lob it out on the full. The Dogs were in real crisis mode now, since they couldn’t possibly afford to concede any more points in the precious minutes before half time.

Nevertheless, Olakau’atu was inside the ten by tackle three, and again the Sea Eagles swept left, looking good for a Garrick double on the wing only for Tommy’s creaky early form to return to haunt him as he put it down in the middle of the park. The pass from DCE wasn’t too crash hot either – you could tell that the two hadn’t played any trials footy together – and Burton responded with a much more conservative kick, drilling it over the sideline for what seemed to be a quiet end to the first stanza, until the Foxx delivered one more clutch effort.

Ado-Carr has such a restless rugby league spirit that he can’t help but enterprise to the last, and so it was here, as he scooped up Garrick’s final kick and launched into one last desperate counter-attack. As the siren rang out, he showed it a couple times, headed for the left wing, and promptly lost it into a Jurbo-Koula tackle – Jurbo on top, Koula down low. In a masterpiece of ball handling, Trbojevic offloaded it back up to Garrick to scoot inside the red zone and take a second boot, before Bullemor made it three kicks on this set with a grubber deep in goal.

The first half now reached its maximal intensity, as Johns and King converged on the footy, for what initially seemed like a magnificent Manly try thirty seconds after the siren. Yet the replay showed that King had delivered an even more magnificent display in defence here, somehow managing to get his hands on the Steeden’s beneath Johns’ nose, and save the points at the very death to send his men into the sheds with only a six-point deficit. Still, this was a sign of things to come in the back forty, when the Brookvalers would hit their stride.

The Dogs had the first touch back and Manly rallied some staunch defence in response, with Olakau’atu, in particular, making a big tackle to drive Waddell a couple metres back from his forty. Even without the hosts cramming in, however, Canterbury’s organization left a bit to be desired here, as they failed to get to Burton for the kick, instead relying on Mahoney to dab it off the right boot down a rapidly narrowing corridor on the left edge. All the Sea Eagles needed to stake their claim on the second stanza was a big charge – and Bullemor made it.

Three plays into the next set, the no. 16 brushed past the Foxx, trampled over a low shot from Preston, and dragged Mahoney an extra five metres, to bring his men from forty to forty. Olakau’atu tried to lean into this momentum a play later, with a big fend on Averillo, but the little centre did well to contain him with the support of Kiraz, who had rejoined the fray after the sheds. The whole set finished on a pretty banal note, with a Johns kick that descended square on the chest of Kikau, who was nevertheless in for his roughest patch of the evening.

Two plays later, big Billy lobbed an impossible offload out to Alamoti, who was always going to lose it into a bone-shuddering shot from Tuipulotu. DCE got boot to ball immediately, and while his first attempt was tangled up in Ado-Carr’s legs, he just beat Burton to make more plosive contact the second time around. One more contest with Ado-Carr now ensued, the two Origin stars going shoulder to shoulder, but the Foxx fell over at the death, as Daly toed it a second time, and then scooped it up for the try that definitively cemented Manly’s flow.

With Garrick adding the extras, Manly had tripled the Doggies at 18-6. Bullemor was the right man to commence the restart, since his charge had laid the long-range platform for Daly’s try, while Flanno was finally back on the park. No sooner had he started barking orders at the troops than Kikau’s bad streak continued with a crowding penalty on Keppie, meaning DCE was deep in Canterbury’s end by the time he looped an oddball kick out to Garrick, flat and oblique enough that Kiraz was able to leap a metre above the winger and collect it in the air.

This ushered in the first fluid passage of Canterbury football since the sheds and yet once again they didn’t make it to the end of the count, thanks to a RFM cough-up into a low Jurbo-Keppie combo that brought the completion tally to 13/22 v. 22/26. Olakau’atu drove into Kikau to put this glimpse of blue and white confidence behind them, and once more the Doggies conceded a penalty early in the count, this time off an illegal strip from Sutton. Just when they seemed to be cresting in attack again, the Sea Eagles opted to take the two points.

It was a strange decision, perhaps borne of the satisfaction of making it a round twenty on the board, so it was doubly disappointing when Garrick swung it too far out to the right. Ever the leader, DCE delivered a consolidator midway through the following set, when he almost busted through a low shot from Burton at his forty, swung 180 degrees, and popped it back to Croker for some second phase. It wasn’t quite enough, though to quell this mini-slump, which ended with Koula crossing over, but only after Tuipulotu knocked the high ball forward.

The Manly 2 started working his way back from that frustration by handling Burton’s next kick, but the Sea Eagles had lost their shine for the moment, as Keppie lost the footy at the forty on the penultimate play. With a full set in Manly’s half, Kikau, Waddell and Preston delivered a trio of big charges up the right, before the Berries swung left for Kikau to show and go, carrying Koula, DCE, and Tuipulotu with him into the ten. It was now 16-16 tackles in the opposition twenty, and the Dogs had a make or break moment as they arrived at the last.

Mahoney didn’t do too badly with the grubber, but Olakau’atu was still on it before it hit the chalk, galvanising the Sea Eagles into a renewed period of attack that started with Garrick dragging Mahoney and Flanno a couple of metres and almost breaking free of their combined tackle. Still, the Manly magic wasn’t perfected just yet, as DCE only just made it over the thirty for the kick, and Perham won a penalty from Johns on the return. With a strong play here, Canterbury might just accelerate their way past the grim grind that was settling in at Brooky.

Franklin Pele had a sharp shot at it, glimpsing a break in the line, and winning his men six again, before Flanno added another burst of energy with a deft offload deep in the right corner for Mahoney, who shifted it back in field for Brown to take a crack beneath the crossbar. There were only a couple of centimetres in it, as Croker and Turbo tumbled on for the clutchiest Manly defence so far, but the Sea Eagles prevailed, right down to the brutal low shot from Koula on Preston that brought the subsequent left sweep to an ungainly conclusion.

Between the Croker-Turbo combo in the middle, and the individual effort from Koula on the left, the hosts were starting to heat up, and while Ado-Carr got the best of Tolu beneath the next high ball, Pele allowed his acceleration to get the best of him when he aimed to reprise that splendid charge early in the count, and ended up fumbling the play-the-ball as he tried to rush it through. Manly had a scrum from the twenty and two Burton plays defined the next passage of play, the first a cracking shot that saw him chop down Olakau’atu five metres out.

Unfortunately the next was an offside, won by DCE bringing the Steeden even closer to the chalk, and so a couple of rapid shifts in direction later, Olakau’atu was plunging over again on the right edge, where he now hung half a metre above the line. Only the most heroic of Averillo (low) and Burton (high) hits held him up, and even then the Sea Eagles got six again off a Brown ruck error, at which point they gathered all their accumulated power and shifted it rapidly back to the left, where Tuilagi was momentarily overwhelmed into losing the footy.

Exhausted, but also desperate for position, Kiraz scooped it up and offloaded through a Jurbo-Bullemor hit for Flanno to hit the twenty with Croker and DCE piling onto him, and no other Bulldogs pushing up in support. Ado-Carr took a restless run up the left, Averillo mirrored it on the right, and Mahoney booted a long low one from halfway, as the first Canterbury chase in a while made it look like Manly might spend most of this set in their own ten, with Parker only just cleaning up Mahoney’s kick on the line after a pair of passes from Garrick and Turbo.

All that changed on play four, when Croker shot a brilliant dummy ball out to Taniela Paseka, who trampled through low shots from Preston and Brown on left and right and popped it out to Turbo with Mahoney making his 38^th tackle of the game around his left ankle. Tommy careened into space at the halfway mark, and flicked it across for DCE at the forty, before the skipper sped past an outstretched arm from Perham for a triumphant promenade to score untouched beneath the crossbar before booting it exuberantly into a rapturous home crowd.

With Garrick adding the extras from right in front, Manly were quadruple the Dogs at 24-6. Pele came in hard on Paseka on play one of the restart, but a monster run from Aloiai indicated that this resurgent Sea Eagles spirit was here to stay, as did another piece of masterful choreography a play later. It was bookended by a pair of clutch efforts from Turbo, who started by flicking the footy half a metre ahead of Tuipulotu, who nevertheless turned a full circle and reined it in with the Foxx up in his face, before shifting it back inside to Koula.

The gun backliner followed by sending it on to Turbo, who bobbled it, regained it, and finally succumbed to a two-man tackle, bringing this precarious-visionary sequence full circle. Still, DCE kept the set alive by chipping on the fourth, going shoulder to shoulder with Mahoney, and giving him a much more emphatic push than the one that got Flanno sent to the bin. Canterbury’s ice man was unfazed, however, continuing a staunch afternoon by landing on the Steeden, cleaning it up, and recovering his position for another grim Bulldogs advance.

They spent the first four tackles in the twenty, and even Burton’s first spiral bomb of the year launched from only five metres further forward, didn’t have much impact. Parker might have had to circle it before securing it, but he still made a good enough return to almost hit blue and white territory. That kind of confidence was enough for Turbo to take a break, after almost an hour of football, as Kaeo Weekes left the bench, and promptly knocked on during his first carry, paving the way for the Doggies’ first campout on the Manly line since the sheds.

There wasn’t much special about their next set, apart from a couple of enterprising runs from Kiraz up the right wing, but at least they got some more position when Johns knocked Mahoney’s grubber on after Weekes missed a couple of swings at it. However, in a moment that encapsulated Canterbury’s frustrations this afternoon, play paused two tackles in, when Croker came in hard at marker, and caught the knee of Brown in his face. He was on his back for a good minute or two before gingerly leaving the park, as his team mates took a breather.

This would have already killed the momentum of the Bulldogs attack, but to make matters worse Turbo was back on now, returning to fullback in the wake of the two errors from Weekes, who jumped into dummy half instead. Like Flanno on the previous set, Burton overegged a late pass, and his end-over-ender didn’t do much to compensate – even more agonising in that this initially looked like it might be a miracle ball for Preston, who flew through the air, reined it into his chest with his right hand, but let it slide at the last second.

Manly now had 1123 run metres to the Doggies’ 19, as Paseka built continuity with their last tryscoring sequence with a mad charge up the middle, followed by a staunch Aloiai carry to the Canterbury forty. DCE sent it long and low, and while Perham didn’t have a chase to contend with, he slipped a few metres out from the try line. Once again the Dogs were working it off their own chalk, as Flanagan became the next man to spiral bomb it, but without causing Tuipulotu any challenges. Someone in the visiting side had to seriously step up now.

No surprise it was Mahoney, who condensed all his commitment this afternoon into possibly the most technically accomplished tackle of the game. Coming in low on Garrick, he put his weight on the right boot, drove his right shoulder into his quarry’s chest, and just when he was winded lifted him clean off the left leg and dumped him on the turf. It was poetry in motion, and in another match might have been a rhythm-shifter, but Turbo was in open space again on play four, where Brown only just got him down. Manly were elasticizing rapidly now.

All that energy constellated around DCE, who shaped to kick only to send it inside for Weekes, who dropped it on the boot for a grubber that Perham had no choice but to chase down and bump dead. Burton went short with the dropout, Kiraz didn’t even reach the contest, and Garrick collected it at the ten, paving the way for a set that remained focused on the left edge. Ben Turbo drove it within a metre of the line, Johns did the same deeper into the corner, and Weekes drifted from dummy half back inside for Aloiai to come down before the left padding.

While focused, the set didn’t have a great deal of vision to it – until DCE found his pocket perfectly to slot a one-pointer through the uprights, in a culmination of his masterful afternoon with the boot. The Dogs got an unexpected chance on play one of the restart, when Paseka did well to scoop up a long low kick from Burton but played it facing sideways as King and Sutton barrelled in. Just like that, Canterbury were attacking from within the opposition twenty, and yet this would soon turn into one of their most frustrated sets of the entire clash.

It started with Kikau’s own personal frustrations reaching a crisis as he chucked a few slaps at Aloiai at the brink of the ten, as Olakau’atu, his nemesis in this particular game, came in to add a few words. It all ended up disadvantaging the Dogs, who again lost focus early in the count. What little spirit they could muster came first from Burton, who glimpsed a gap five out from the crossbars, and then from Mahoney, who’d set up Burto and then shifted right on the next tackle for a grubber that ricocheted up off Johns with Tommy caught in the line.

Preston got it down but the try was denied due to an offside, and so Manly were back in their flow once more, moving cleanly and crisply up the park, feeling like they had the wind at the heels, as Weekes barged into the red on the fourth, and Paseka reached the ten a play later. It was too late in the game so say they were tempting fate, but they did open the door to a Canterbury consolation try when Paseka made another mistake in the play-the-ball, this time by rolling his boot off the Steeden while attempting to rise out of a Burton tangle on the turf.

With only four minutes on the clock Daly decided not to challenge it, and Kiraz made another heroic effort to work it out of the right corner – he’d done a mountain of grunt work today – but even the Foxx was unable to make much headway in this part of the park. It took a searching run from Mahoney to finally elasticize the set on the fourth, but with DCE banging Burto to ground a play later it all came down to a Flanagan kick that looked like it might clear Tommy’s head before the Manly fullback contorted round to catch it without missing a beat.

It was a particularly good save in that Turbo was still not working at full capacity, especially late in this second stint, which saw him stretching the calf in backplay. Garrick did the same after Mahoney rallied the troops with a huge hit in the middle of the park, but both men were in fighting order when the Sea Eagles sent up a successful challenge to prove that the no. 5 hadn’t played at an Averillo kick – just continued his original line and gait, unable to pull back from the tackle. They’d recognised when to fold the challenge, and now they knew to hold it.

It was easy to forget, at this late stage, that the Doggies had put up some staunch work, especially in the first forty, which they harkened back to now with an enterprising run from Perham, who scooped up a Johns kick before dodging and weaving out of his red zone. With twenty seconds on the clock, and a ruck error from Turbo, the 25-6 scoreline seemed set. Cometh the hour cometh the man, however, as DCE now made up for Manly’s slow opening stanza by executing a visionary individual play that nabbed him his first hat trick in the NRL.

It occurred on the very next play from Turbo’s ruck error, when Perham got away with lobbing a forward ball from dummy half out to Burton, who flicked it on for Alamoti, but instead found DCE taking it as if he had always been the intended target. Tucking the footy under the right arm, Daly put up his left index finger to signal that he was in sync with the incredulous and exuberant home crowd, before plunging over without a Bulldog in sight, in a poetic ending to this afternoon’s lopsided battle of the halves, and a galvanizing season start for the Sea Eagles.