The Dragons and Bulldogs hadn’t met in Round 1 for twenty years when they rocked up at Jubilee on Saturday afternoon for a quintessential suburban footy game, suffused with genuine bad blood following their passionate encounter in Round 23, 2024, when Kyle Flanagan was accused of biting or otherwise making illegal contact with Stephen Crichton’s head after a heated tackle. The Kogarah crowd were pumped for a big contest and the home team made Canterbury wait a few moments before trotting on for maximum impact.

Despite being the away team this was a confident Canterbury outfit. They’d made finals for the first time in eight years in 2024, narrowly losing 22-24 to Manly in Week 1, when Matt Burton missed a two-point field goal at the 80^th minute. It was also their second year with Critta, who’d won Dally M Captain of the Year and been named as centre in the Dally M Team of the Year in 2024 too. They’d had the best defence in the comp for long periods last season, and there was a rousing sense that this was their time to really congeal and shine.

Add to that only two Round 1 wins from the past 12 seasons and this was the moment for the blue and white to make a statement, especially with Marcelo Montoya returning after four years away. Sitili Tupouniua was also debuting for the club and cemented himself as an immediate cult hero with run after punishing run, along with a pair of tries that were as elegant as they were tough. Jacob Kiraz was on the sideline with an unspecified back issue while Enari Tuala had suffered a foot fracture during pre-season and was off for 10 weeks.

On the other side of the Steeden there were a few big jersey changes in the St. George side. After close to a decade in the cardinal and myrtle, Damien Cook was returning to the team where he made his NRL debut in 2013, against his 2014 team, while Clint Gutherson had also shifted from his 2016-2024 colours at Parramatta to become Red V custodian. Christian Tuipulotu was back early from a hamstring injury and would celebrate with the second hat trick of his career, while Kyle Flanagan was marking a well-earned century at first grade.

Finally, Lachie Ilias was back for his first NRL game in 359 days after being demoted to reserve grade following South Sydney’s two disastrous losses at the start of the 2024 season, and while he had a few messy moments, he was also promising and at times courageous in defence. With significant recruits in Val Holmes and Emre Guler, and Hamish Stewart making his NRL debut, the game was an experiment in new combinations for a Dragons outfit steeled by a 46-26 Charity Shield win over the Rabbitohs in Mudgee.

The match got off to a cracking start, with two lost balls on the first two sets firing up both teams into an adrenalin-soaked opening quarter. Emre Guler had the first carry and was dragged back over the ten by a three-man pack led by Daniel Suluka-Fifita, in for Sam Hughes, whose left shoulder was enough to force the footy free. With a scrum from the ten, Stephen Crichton took the first Canterbury carry of the night, coming up against Kyle Flanagan, in their first encounter since the biting incident during August last season.

Still fired up, Suluka-Fifita brought it back in field, and yet just when the Dogs should have consolidated, around a mammoth Viliame Kikau run towards the crossbar, big Billy lost it in turn, thanks to a wraparound tackle from Damien Cook, with Guler coming in for support. The fans rose in the stands as the Dragons packed their own scrum from the ten, as Jaydn Su’A contributed a monster run to bring them to the brink of the thirty, and Connor Tracey made up for a frustrating trial against the Broncos with a return back to his own forty.

Matt Burton ended the first complete Canterbury set with the first in a series of boots to the left edge, where Mat Feagai put on a gymnastics display to collect the footy above Bronson Xerri’s shoulder. Again, though, the Red V struggled to break the thirty, and again the Dogs failed to do much with Burto’s left-edge kick. Admittedly Feagai got there first and bumped it back for Burton to take another shot, but Clint Gutherson had an easy pickup in the same spot, while a Burto slow peel a beat later gave St. George a much-needed boost in position.

Finally, the Saints were into enemy territory, even if Reed Mahoney and Jaeman Salmon almost dragged Guler back to halfway on tackle two, and they accelerated through a Luciano Leilua charge up the left that took all of Critta’s energy to shut down. However, Ilias now delivered the first of two subpar plays in quick succession, with a hurried fifth-tackle kick to the right edge that Tracey awaited on the dead ball line with superb patience, allowing it to trickle dead at the last minute with Su’A coming up hard and fast on the chase.

Gutho made up for it a bit with another confident take beneath Burto’s boot, albeit slammed to ground by Xerri, and with a second early penalty, this time a Jaeman Salmon offside, the Dragons started to show some spirit, with Moses Suli smashing Xerri onto his back on tackle one, and Ilias elasticising things further with a late offload to Toby Couchman, who was starting for the first time, before Leilua risked a clutch cut-out pass that saw Christian Tuipulotu make it to the thirty with a committed run up the left.

Everything seemed to be coming together as Jack De Belin straightened the play back in the middle, only for Su’A to flinch in the face of Xerri and deliver a bad ball for Su’A, whose cough-up gifted the Dogs a scrum from their twenty. Suluka-Fifita took his fourth run in ten minutes midway through and De Belin came up with an incredible riposte to the Suli-Xerri hit, rushing in low on Tracey, picking him up with one leg, and dumping him on his back, in an old-school driving tackle that galvanised St. George and demanded a great follow up.

Feagai provided it with his clutchiest take in the air yet, an even more gymnastic repeat of his opening catch, his body so suspended now that he was at risk of sticking a boot in Xerri’s face. It was agonising then, when Tuipulotu didn’t play the ball properly a few tackles later – the start of the Bulldogs’ first tryscoring sequence, with a scrum clock violation from Guler providing them with the position they needed to put down their first points. Suluka-Fifita was really making the most of his time on the park, taking them to the red zone early on.

They stacked left but waited until the last – and it paid dividends, with one of the most elegant and precarious sweeps of the entire game. Mahoney got it rolling with a risky low ball out of dummy half, Sexton leaned low to seamlessly subsume it into the sweep, Burton straightened just enough, and showed it just enough, to draw in Su’A, and finally Kikau made the most of a Xerri decoy to catch-and-pass through Feagai for Marcelo Montoya to pivot off the left boot and twist through a Gutho tackle to slam down the first four points.

Montoya had already been emotional during the week about his return to the Bulldogs, so seeing him score his 50^th career try where he started as a local junior was one of the high points of Round 1. Yet true to the volatile rhythm of the game, Montoya himself put it down on tackle two of the restart, when Cook repeated the wraparound play that had forced Kikau to cough it up on the second set. With a scrum in the Canterbury twenty, and Burton continuing his mixed 2024 form from the sideline, St. George could take the lead with six.

Two plays later, they did just that, with a less spectacular but more clinical left sweep, in which Val Holmes used his first touch of the night to assist Tuipulotu, who made up for the error that ushered in the Montoya try by making it nine tries in nine games. Things got even spicier when the on-field call of try was sent up to review and confirm two facts – first, that Tuipulotu had fumbled the footy at the death; second, that Critta had been wrong-footed by Blake Wilson’s last-ditch tackle and inadvertently slammed his knee into Tuipulotu’s head.

If it had happened during regular play this would have surely been a sin bin. As it was, the Canterbury captain was put on report, as the residual bad blood of last year’s game spilled over, the St. George fans rising in the stands, a full-on fracas not far away on the field either. The Dragons had scored their first try off their first attacking set on the Bulldogs’ line, Holmes bookended it by slotting through an easy conversion from right in front, and a mammoth run from De Belin into Jacob Preston cleared the way for Gutho to hit halfway.

Meanwhile, Montoya started fighting back from his error with a terrific catch in the air, and Xerri took inspiration at the other end of the field, making his highest leap yet beneath Burton’s boot only to roll it back towards his try line for Su’A to scoop up at the forty. Critta took out the team’s collective frustration with an enormous shot on Gutho on play four, in what was fast becoming a game of good old-fashioned bone-rattlers, but the set was truncated by Suluka-Fifita’s first misstep, high contact as Ryan Couchman fell into him.

The contact would take the St. George 15 off with what would turn out to be a season-ending ACL injury, while back on the park Holmes almost went from assister to tryscorer, after Burton conceded six again with a mammoth hit on Ilias four plays in. Canterbury swept left, where Holmes would have likely scored untouched if he’d managed to secure a short ball from Leilua. Instead, spilling it at speed, he made chest contact with Preston, who was pinged for a late effort as Flanno and Critta made their opinions known to each other.

The hosts were now 4-1 with penalties as they rolled it up the park, as the escalating volatility of the near-fracas following Preston’s contact gave way to an inconsistent period of play for both sides. Just when the Red V were settling into a beautiful left sweep, Feagai overran a potential assist from Suli, which sailed over the sideline. Moments later Xerri broke through a low tackle from De Belin, who would shortly leave the park for a Cat 2 HIA, and charged to halfway, before Tracey continued his momentum to arrive in the forty.

Xerri put up his hand for another carry a play later, and right when Burton seemed to be accelerating the set into its final tryscoring phase, Suli shifted into the wing position and somehow managed to go from fingertip contact to wrapping himself around Burto’s torso without enough force for the two of them to tumble into touch. With Couchman now off the park, Hamish Stewart made his NRL debut, and received a rough reception from a Mahoney-led pack early in the next set, as Haynes, Mann and Tupouniua trotted on too.

The energy refresh was palpable, as Hayes bumped off a tackle to hit halfway, Tupouniua added ten more metres, and the Dogs received six again fourteen metres out. The first of two pauses in play now occurred, for De Belin to leave for his HIA and so bring Guler back onto the park, and while Preston did well to get past Cook on the fourth, forcing Flanno to shut him down a metre or two from the line, the veteran hooker showed his worth by scooping up a misfired dummy half ball from Mahoney as Canterbury’s attack crumbled.

Just like that, the Dragons had absorbed all the close-range energy of the last set as their own, only for Xerri to get a little too enthusiastic, coming in hard on Ilias to jolt the footy free but inadvertently getting a touch himself before diving upon it. This was the second chance for both teams to get a breather after a frantic half hour of football, and Gutho was rejuvenated two tackles off the scrum from the forty, when he hit enemy territory and sent the ball out to Feagai, who contributed a strong run to almost hit the opposition twenty.

Unfortunately these were the best two plays of the set, which stumbled with Stewart, faltered when Sexton shut down Flanno comprehensively on the left edge, and ended with a Mann hit forcing a Toby Couchman knock-on. Stewart did well to regain some ground at the end of the subsequent set, when he absorbed some brutal Tupouniua contact while remaining upright in the tackle. Likewise, there was potential in Feagai’s most flamboyant aerial contest so far, especially with Montoya threatening him more than ever before.

Nevertheless, the young winger lost it in the air and Kikau was there to scoop it up, twist around through a Gutho tackle, and lob a beautiful offload backwards, although this was quickly called a scrum. The Dogs scored on the first play, as Mahoney and Burton swept it right, Tracey held it long enough to bring in the Dragons backliners, and Wilson popped over in the corner. Burton did better with the sideline kick, reverse swinging it just inside the right post, bringing Canterbury to 10-6, with an even better try just around the corner.

The restart began strangely, as Montoya stuck a boot back towards the dead ball line when catching the footy but remained a millimetre from the chalk, although a Guler penalty early in the count meant that the Doggies got a bump up the park anyway. A few plays later, Preston made his best run of the night, notching up twenty metres to hit the ten, ten of them with Flanno on his back, while almost brushing off Gutho as he came in for support. It had all the energy of a tryscoring run, and galvanised an incredible left edge try a beat later.

The fullback has a special obligation to be the heart and soul of a team, and Tracey was all heart here in one of his best plays as Canterbury custodian. Mahoney swept it left to Kikau, who swirled around with Ilias around his waist and launched a two-handed volleyball offload to Tracey, who reached out both hands in turn to take it low with Feagai and Suli converging on him, before clutching it into his chest, launching off the left boot like his life defended on it, copping a Gutho arm four out from the line, and barging into Couchman.

It all ended with Tracey’s left hand on the chalk, his right cradling the Steeden for dear life, as he tried to pivot himself out of the Couchman contact with his right leg, his left hanging over the turf. In a superhuman effort, a burst of Bulldogs passion, he somehow managed to get the tip of the footy down, as Ilias piled on top, inadvertently helping with the downward pressure. Burton now set up the tee eleven metres in and slotted it through the posts. Canterbury had gone from a 6-4 deficit to a 16-6 lead in the space of several minutes.

Tupouniua anchored the restart in two tough runs, the second staunchly met by Su’A just over halfway, and neither Feagai nor Montoya secured Burton’s next kick, leaving it for Xerri to tap it back to Mann, who shanked it over the left sideline in one of the more chaotic moments of the second quarter. Three plays later, the Dragons sent up a good challenge to confirm that a supposed knock-on from Su’A was erroneous – the no-look flick pass from Ilias had sailed straight through the crook of his right elbow without once making contact.

With play resuming midway through the count, a refreshed Preston came in hard to shut down Stewart, and while Gutho revived by burning up the left edge, Tuipulotu was brought down by four Bulldogs half a metre from the chalk. Bunching the blue and white in the corner, the Dragons were clearly keen to force a short-range error on the cusp of the break, as word came down from the sheds that De Belin had passed his HIA, but the Doggies made good position, thanks in part to Tupouinua’s seventh run, and it remained a ten point game.

There was a relatively placid start to the second stanza, with the Dogs having the first set back, and Burton kicking five shy of halfway for one of Feagai’s easier catches. De Belin brought the Dragons over halfway on the next set, with the energy that comes from passing an HIA, while Ryan Couchman had been diagnosed with a season-ending ACL injury; it was a pretty sad sight to see him on crutches on the sideline. Holmes got a good offload away to Gutho a set later, and Critta, who’d been a bit quiet, managed second phase for Sexton.

Four minutes in, Canterbury arrived at the Dragons’ red zone, where Burton grubbered and received six again, before Leilua knocked the next pass down, gifting the visitors a scrum ten out. They headed right, where a Burton ball split the difference between Tracey and Wilson, forcing Blake to dive desperately on it at the twenty before Preston brought it back to the ten. It was one of the more chaotic moments for the Bulldogs attack but they made up for it with the simplest and most elegant try on the very next play, on the other side of the park.

Tupouniua had already made a mammoth debut for the Doggies, so it felt right that he scored now, on his twelfth run of the game. Mahoney began with a wide pass for Mann, who ran into the line and popped out the bullet ball for Sitili to break through Ilias and Su’A and outpace Cook to slam it down. It was a tribute to his unique ability to combine athleticism and strength in the back row, and provided Burton with another easy angle, although he only just made it 22-6, richocheting the footy off the right post at the death.

Both sides got some fresh blood now, as Toby Couchman rejoined the fray and put a good shot on Tupouinua midway through the restart, going chest to chest to smash him to ground. Even then, though, Mann made it over halfway and Montoya piled onto Feagai to ensure he couldn’t rise from collecting the high ball. Shane Flanagan was also drawing on the bench, with Leilua off the park and Raymond Faitala-Mariner leaving the sideline, as Tupouniua came up with yet another sterling run towards the end of the next Dogs set.

Feagai was being absolutely pummelled beneath the high ball tonight, managing a big left step beneath the next Burton kick only to be skittled by Kikau at the ten. St. George struggled for position on play two, and then Holmes lost it three plays in, as he twisted away from a rolling Bulldogs defence that saw Preston, Mahoney, Sexton and Hayes give him no quarter. Canterbury had a scrum just outside the thirty and a few plays later Tupouniua capped off a spectacular debut by cementing himself as a future blue and white cult hero.

Hayes was into the twenty on tackle two, with over 100 metres for ten runs, and Burton brushed off Ilias to arrive at the ten, before Sitili made it a double on play four, this time beneath the crossbars. It was every bit as elegant as his first try, and just as simple too, as Sexton surged into the line, held up the pass to bring in Couchman and popped it on for Tupouniua to dance around a De Belin grab and cross the line much too late for Gutho to make the difference, before Burto booted it into the Kogarah crowd for a 28-6 lead.

Tupouniua’s double was all the more remarkable in that injuries had kept him from the pre-season trials. With the second most run metres at 118 after Tracey’s 145, he launched into the restart, as the Dragons steeled themselves to recapture the promise of their trials, with Jacob Liddle preparing to enter the fray. Their line speed on the restart was pretty lacklustre, allowing the Dogs to make about ten metres per run, but three into the next set two things happened: Holmes tempted a Wilson slow peel and Crichton got a leg cramp.

Critta was still down in backplay as the Red V hurled up the park, desperate to remedy the deficit of their 3-12 tackles in enemy territory since the break, and by the time the Canterbury captain returned to his feet, he was fifty metres too far away to prevent Tuipulotu accelerating outside Sexton, and setting his sights on Tracey. Footy clutched in his left hand he pivoted off the left boot, came down a metre out and relied on brute strength to slide the Steeden over the chalk, hitting back at Tuipouniua with a double of his own.

Of course, the real riposte here was to Critta, who had been the casualty for both of Tuipolutu’s tries – first with the knee to the head, now by his absence in the defensive backline. Re-energised by this magnificent display, Gutho was barking order at the troops as Holmes lined up a difficult sideline angle, booting through a curve ball that looked promising at first but ended up sailing past the right post. The game was poised at the final score of last year’s contentious game – 10-28 – and the Dragons had to seize the moment quickly.

Unfortunately, while Ilias had time for a creative kick option to close the restart, thanks in part to a strong dummy half dart from a fresh Liddle, he booted it straight into the chest of Tracey, meaning that Hayes was comfortably over halfway on tackle four. Burton may have had his first real kick pressure of the night from Guler, but even with the wobble Feagai was unable to get far past the ten, so Liddle did well to energise the subsequent set, before Ilias sent a soaring kick to the right edge, as the Red V terrorized Montoya’s wing for a change.

Still, it was the same result as beneath Burto’s boot – Montoya and Feagai competed for it in the air, the Dragons lost the ball and, strangely, didn’t send up a Challenge, even though they might have had a case here. Feagai didn’t do better at the end of the next Bulldogs set, seizing the Steeden only for Kikau to grab him across the chest and tumble him to ground. St. George only made 28 metres gain, and two Canterbury campouts on the Red V’s line now ensued, neither of them producing points, as the hosts stayed strong in defence.

This burst of position began four plays into the next set, when Preston took a few minutes to recover from a right leg cramp, the replay showing a Guler hip drop had been part of the problem. The penalty gifted the Dogs a full set in the twenty, Critta driving it towards the ten on play one, and with 20-12 tackles in the red zone they looked likely to score here, especially with six again from Couchman a few plays later. Yet Wilson couldn’t break the left, or Salmon the middle, while a Sexton show-and-go turned into a lost ball on the right.

That cough-up was largely due to a mammoth hit from Stewart, although the debutant came full circle midway through the next set, when he dove on a Tuipulotu offload but fumbled the tip on the turf as Bailey Hayward surged in. It was a tribute to the Doggies’ defensive ability to rattle the Dragons this evening, so once again it seemed like the visitors must score here with a full set inside the thirty. A driving run from King and offload to Mahoney elasticised the attack and a Leilua effort got them another restart at the ten.

The tipping-point in the final quarter now arrived, as Kikau put all his bulk behind a charge on the left edge, desperate to deliver where Sexton had failed a set before. Cometh the hour, cometh the men, as Ilias made up for a spotty night with a heroic defensive effort, putting his whole body on the line, and sticking his legs beneath big Billy, to ensure that, with Su’A slamming in on top, he couldn’t get the Steeden down, despite being in goal. That single play, so powerful in its dedication, woke up St. George to the most kinetic try tonight.

It came from Liddle, who had been relegated to the bench by Cook, but was clearly raring for something special the moment he stepped onto the park – something worthy of his breakout season at Kogarah last year. He more than delivered off a Hayward slow peel, seizing the mercurial moment when every other player let their guard down to take the Steeden all the way from his own thirty to the try line. Even Couchman was unprepared, chucking the footy nonchalantly behind him as he turned around to register the ref’s call.

Taking it on the full, the ex-Tiger realised that for a second or two, nobody in the Dogs defence was playing eyes-up footy, and set his eyes grimly on the chalk. Hayward was still processing the penalty, his back to his own line, and only noticed Liddle as he steamed past, while Mahoney and Sexton simply couldn’t close the gap, Toby barely getting fingertips to him as he seemed to defy time and space like a superhero. Pivoting inside to elude Salmon and accelerating away at the death he crossed untouched beside the right post in elation.

If Tupouniua already felt like a cult figure for Canterbury then this was a try for Dragons lore, the best moment of the game, and even more glorious for how well the Red V had defended their line through successive sets only few minutes before. On the other side of the Steeden this was the direst moment for the Dogs, a throwback to their early 2020s nadir, so it was no surprise that four defenders piled onto Faitala-Mariner on play one of the restart. With the Holmes kick, the score was 28-14 with a little over ten minutes left.

Critta’s leg issue got the better of him now, forcing him off the park as Tupouniua shifted to centre, and Mahoney took a dummy half run to hit halfway as his captain left the fray. Feagai had possibly his most brutal collect yet, putting his hands up for the footy and leaving his torso horribly exposed for Montoya and Xerri to smash in. Winded, he took a moment to rise from the grass, as the Bulldogs formed the scrum inside the red zone, and Burton dummied and stepped past Gutho on the first tackle, Leilua rushing in to contain him.

Once again, though, the Dogs failed to deliver at close range, thanks to a great hooker-on-hooker play from Liddle, who launched himself at Mahoney, racking the Steeden from his grasp while making sure to rake it backwards, as Canterbury discovered when they sent up an ill-advised Challenge. As St. George packed the scrum, Faitala-Mariner left the park for an HIA and De Belin popped back off the bench. With only 12-30 tackles in the opposition half they got another miracle try now, though this time off a team effort rather than a solo run.

It all began with Leilua, who offloaded through a combined Sexton-Preston tackle to Holmes, who copped Wilson around the waist but still managed the second phase for Gutho to scoop it off the ground and sent it onto Liddle just before Salmon flung him down too. Liddle, in turn, rotated 360 degrees and popped it out to Ilias, who continued the comeback of the Ilias tackle by shaping right and then darting back infield to leave Burton behind, getting past Tupounia and Kikau before finally crossing the ten with a big fend on Tracey.

Brought down by the Canterbury custodian five metres out, he played it fast for Liddle to cement another sublime tryscoring sequence. Shaping right, Liddle dashed left along the ten and then sent one of the great Hail Mary passes, a two-hander so parabolic that it sailed about thirty metres above the park but only travelled ten. Gutho leaped up and batted it with his right hand back to the wing, where Holmes reined it in with the left and lofted it out for Tuipulotu to careen off the left beat, leaving Preston and King behind him on the turf.

It was the kind of mercurial sequence that made the footy seem light as air and the players even lighter, a great contrast to the blunt physicality of Tuipulotu’s hat trick. As the big winger strutted to the home crowd, Holmes swung the Steeden out to the left, keeping it an eight point game as the Dogs settled in to prevent the unthinkable. De Belin got the restart rolling with a barnstorming, back fence charge but St. George were inside the forty on the last play, when Ilias agonisingly put down a Liddle ball as he glanced up at the Dogs defence.

Canterbury now had a full set in the forty, as Cook roved restlessly along the sideline, with King making strong post-contacts through Leilua, Stewart and Liddle to hit the twenty, and Kikau barnstorming into De Belin in turn at the ten, before offloading for Mahoney to pop it on for Burton, who would have scored on the left if not for a desperate double hit from Ilias and Suli a metre out. This was one of the best sets for King, who now dragged three defenders to the posts, but with Kikau losing it the Dogs had failed to capitalise again.

Shane Flanagan had Cook and Liddle on the park for the remaining minutes and there was a real energy to the next Dragons set, which saw them over halfway on tackle two. Suli offloaded out the back a play later, only for Gutho to put it down before limping over to the scrum, the exhaustion of his men writ large on his face. There was one more strong set for the Bulldogs, with Tracey hitting 100 metres, and then Feagai lost it forward on the ground, with only a minute on the board. Critta was off the park but Canterbury had prevailed.

The blue and white would be rocking up against the Titans next week, when they’d post a comfortable win, while the Dragons would have to suffer a one-point loss against the Bunnies, Cook fronting up to his old team, and then wait until Round 4, after the bye, to finally get the competition points – against Melbourne of all teams. It had been one of the most exciting and hard-fought games of Round 1, a great sequel to the animosity of last year’s Round 23 match, and a promising sign for Critta’s Bulldogs heading into 2026.