With the Knights and Cowboys off the Allegiant turf, the Bulldogs and Dragons were just as keen to make it clear that this match would be all about resolving the big questions that had preoccupied their 2025 campaigns. For the Bulldogs, the question was whether they could successfully layer Lachie Galvin’s creativity into the tightly organised structure that Cameron Ciraldo had built since 2023, especially now Reed Mahoney and Toby Sexton had now departed for the Cowboys and Catalans Dragons.

On the other side of the Steeden, the Red V had a more pressing and modest question: would they be able to overcome the near-starts of the Shane Flanagan era and turn 2026 into the year that they truly consolidated? As it turned out, this would be the first game in their worst ever season opening, the beginning of seven straight losses that culminated with Flanno being shown the door, after some fairly blunt press statements, and Dean Young taking over as interim coach from the 62-16 ANZAC Day loss to the Roosters onwards.

While the Dragons slump would feel interminable over the first half of 2026, there was more urgency to the Bulldogs mission in Vegas tonight. Upon taking the reins in 2023, Ciraldo had embarked upon one of the biggest club reconstructions in recent memory. Between 2017 and 2023, the club had cycled through five coaches, failed to make finals, failed to engage in consistent recruitment strategies and embarked upon one half-hearted rebuild after another, in one of their most turbulent periods of the NRL era.

With that mission to help the Doggies remember what they stood for, Ciraldo had taken the consistency, culture and long-term thinking he’d built into the Penrith system and had devoted each year of his tenure to a distinct goal. 2023 was the most radical, despite Canterbury ending at 15^th, as Ciraldo and Gould decided huge swathes of the club were not fit for purpose, and made systemic changes behind the scenes. For better or worse, this was the year that Jackson Topine received his infamous punishment for turning up late.

2024 then became the great recruitment drive, with Critta, Mann, Curran and Salmon debuting in Game 1 against the Eels and Tracey debuting in Game 2 against the Sharks. By the end of the season, the Dogs had gone from 15^th to 6^th, saw points against fall from 769 to 457 and made finals for the first time since 2016. By early 2025, they were comfortably in the top four and genuine premiership contenders for the first time since 2014, as fans began to wonder if this would be the year they finally got over that loss to South Sydney.

Yet the beginning of 2025 also marked the one thing that Ciraldo hadn’t prepared for – the possibility of Lachie Galvin joining the squad from the Wests Tigers – and it was at this point that Ciraldo’s finely honed vision, so consistent over his first three years, started to fracture into two alternative timelines. In one timeline, Toby Sexton’s modest reliability at halfback gave Matt Burton the space to roam around the field. With Mahoney staunch up the middle and Tracey secure at the back, they had a premiership contending spine.

In the other timeline, Galvin, whose ceiling was higher than any of these players, brought the X factor needed for the Dogs, who were defending like a premiership side but still not quite attacking like one yet. No doubt Galvin could provide that playmaking sophistication in the long term, but with such a tangible premiership window in 2026 – the club was in the top four when he signed, and sitting first on the ladder when his debut arrived – there was always going to be fallout from disrupting a spine built on cohesion and structure.

What made this even more fraught was that, as Trent Hodkinson first pointed out on behalf of the club veterans, Galvin and Burton were both effectively five-eighths who thrived on running the ball, roaming from side to side, improvising in broken play and relying above all on instinct and intuition. Sexton’s skill set might have been more modest, but in his own modest way he was the Reynolds or Cleary that the Bulldogs needed to unlock their collective capability, at least as things stood five months out from finals football.

Ideally, then, Galvin would have been recruited several seasons before the premiership push, and while the Doggies still performed very well in 2026, making the first week of finals footy, for the first time since Ciraldo came to the club they seemed to falter in terms of identity and focus – from the collapse against Brisbane in Round 18 when they started 18-0 (inconceivable at almost any other point in Ciraldo’s tenure) to the qualifying final against Melbourne when Sexton’s structural impact off the bench was immediate and undeniable.

For all those reasons, tonight’s game against the Dragons was less about whether they would win (more or less a foregone conclusion in pre-game coverage) than whether the Burton-Galvin combo looked good enough to hold its on against top four contenders like Penrith, Melbourne and Brisbane. It was a bit of a rude shock, then, when they almost lost, and even if the win eventually allowed them to showcase the mental toughness of the Ciraldo era, they never dominated, made a heap of errors, and regularly lost focus.

In fact, their inability to deliver at key moments led to the first golden point in Vegas, when Critta tried to restore some much-needed leadership by booting through the winning point at the 89^th minute. It was a strange match for the Dragons then, suggesting a grittiness and endurance that wouldn’t play out across the remainder of their 2026 season, even if it did throw the frustrations of the Flanagan era into greater relief in the process – and the very different challenges he’d faced when inheriting the mantle at Kogarah.

For Flanagan, like Ciraldo, had inherited a club in an identity crisis – an identity crisis that Anthony Griffin had managed rather than reformed. The Griffin era was basically about preventing the club getting worse following the chaotic final years of Paul McGregor’s leadership, and accordingly Hook had prioritised consistency to the point of conservatism, which in practice meant over-relying on Ben Hunt – it was no coincidence that the greatest year of the Griffin period was also Hunt’s extraordinary 2022 season.

By contrast Flanno attempted to create more of a collective culture, wrestling the Dragons back into finals contention deep into the 2024 season (they eventually ended 11^th) while engaging in a recruitment drive comparable to Ciraldo’s 2024, as Gutho, Holmes and Cook all came on board. Yet despite these cultural and organisational advancements on the Griffin model, and some semblance of a genuine vision from Flanno, they’d sunk back to the bottom of the ladder by late 2025 and ended ahead of only the Titans and Knights.

The driving question for the Dragons of 2026 then was whether this slump had been analogous to Canterbury’s great rebuild year of 2023 – and for a minute their improved defence, their middle third aggression, and their ability to push the game to golden point, all with the recruitment of Daniel Atkinson from the Sharkies as new halves partner for Kyle Flanagan, suggested that maybe Flanno Senior’s vision would come to fruition. Still, there were cracks here that turned out to be prophetic of the way their season would play out. 

The game began with a pair of offloads – Su’A to Cook on the first set, and an over-the top volleyball effort from Kiraz to Hayward on the second – before settling into close to five minutes of end-to-end footy before the Bulldogs were the first to blink. They’d spent most of their attack so far working it up the middle and no sooner did they start to spread left at their thirty than Galvin popped out an awkward ball that Burton had to reach out and rein in with his right hand. For a moment, veteran and novice halves felt very far apart.

Things got messier when Critta missed Burton’s ball entirely, forcing Kiraz to scramble to save it, but when nobody was waiting for Kiraz at dummy half – Crichton, who had retreated to first receiver, had to launch himself desperately onto the footy – you had to chalk this up to early season rustiness, so at odds was it with Canterbury’s clinical demeanour last season. Nevertheless, it paved the way for St. George’s opening two points tonight, starting with the positional bump that gave Atkinson room for his first attacking kick of the game.

Tracey was unable to collect it and the turnover became a penalty when Hughes was pinged for a pretty messy and unnecessary obstruction on Gutho, who was clearly going to be just one of many chasers converging on Atkinson’s kick. Holmes slotted through the two and the Dogs followed with another chaotic play, this time from Kiraz, usually one of the most composed on the field – and so it was Kiraz who showed his men how to regather immediately, with the follow-up play that paved the way for Canterbury’s first try.

Before that happened, the Dragons received six again midway through the restart, but in what would quickly become a pattern for both teams tonight, they were unable to make good on their momentum, as a strong dummy half run and pass from Cookie ended with Atkinson fumbling it forward into Hughes, who made up for his error by taking it without knocking on. Kiraz’s messy moment – relatively speaking – came early in the next set, as he lost the ball backwards in the face of a tough Guler-Cook combo.

Ever clinical though, Kiraz set the standard for his team with a hard run up the middle on the very next play – and this worked wonders to settle the Dogs, leading to the first great confidence move from Galvin, who on the brink of the red zone called for the footy instead of letting it go out to Burton as senior playmaker by default. The first and best of his many linkups with Preston now ensued, as he headed right, kept showing it to draw in Flanno, and then sent the short ball across for his second-rower to do his footwork magic.

Planting the big right fend on Suli, Preston pivoted off the left boot, then the right, to leave no hope for Guler and Sele. The linkup with Burton was superb, like the apex of a triangle as the two Bulldogs came together, while Preston’s crossover formed a critical point of continuity with Canterbury’s 2025 season, when he became the first forward since Sonny Bill in 2007 to top tryscoring with twelve under his belt. Critta added two from right in front, the start of a good night with the boot, and the Doggies had six on the board. 

Nevertheless, it didn’t take the Dragons – or Guler – long to get some joy. With six again midway through their next set, they scored off their first real foray into Bulldogs territory, as Sele dummied for an extra ten up the middle, Su’A backed into the defence on the right and popped out the offload to Gutho, and the King played it quickly for Cookie to make the best kick so far – a grubber off his left boot that still managed to be a pinpoint effort, allowing Guler to take it on the bounce and score just before the dead ball line.

With Holmes’ kick from in front the Red V were in front again, and yet the tryscoring dried up for the rest of the first stanza, which followed a fairly steady pattern – periods of deadlock following by periods of Dogs getting the upper hand, two of which ended with Critta taking the two to put them four ahead at the sheds. That’s not to say that the Red V were passive though, as Atkinson put in his highest bomb yet to end the restart and his men rallied to ensure that Canterbury only made thirteen metres on their following set.

It was a pretty stark contrast to the next Dragons set, where Gutho alone made twenty on the return, and for a moment it looked like St. George might start grinding down the Doggies, who took three tackles to clear the ten when they next had ball in hand. But just as Kiraz’s correction was all they needed to get back on track, so a Setu Tu ruck error gave them license to start elasticising and experimenting on the edges, starting with Xerri glimpsing space up the right with Galvin on his inside and Montoya on his outside.

A well-placed Suli ankle tap shut down both options so the Bulldogs swept back to the left, where a nice Kikau-Burton-Critta trio of passes ended with Gutho containing Kiraz before he could do any damage. It was as if Canterbury were trying to dig deeper into the free-flowing side-to-side rhythm that had marked their recent set endings, so it felt appropriate that the Dragons had a similarly flamboyant conclusion to their next set, when Atkinson went for a spiralling torpedo but ended up slicing it awkwardly off the side of his boot.

Like Montoya’s mad dash, they came close to team try brilliance here, as the Steeden landed a metre from the sideline just inside the thirty, and ricocheted chaotically back in field, where Tu tapped back with one hand, Holmes offloaded through Critta to Su’A and then, in the most mercurial touch of the game, big Jaydn used the outer edge of his hand to delicately deflect it like he was the lightest man on the park – a play Cook read beautifully by storming twelve metres up the middle and squatting on his haunches to collect it.

As spectacular as that sequence had been, the Dogs still had a full set in the opposition forty, again expanding on the left, where Critta was now cleaned up. On the back of his botched torpedo Atkinson coughed it up three plays into the next Dragons set, ushering in an impressive bout of Canterbury position, at least relative to this to-and-fro game. Atkinson started working his way back with a heroic legs tackle on Burton midway through the count but it was quickly eclipsed by the second great Galvin-Preston combo of the game.

As if attempting to outdo the gymnastic creativity of Su’A’s flick back, Galvin passed to Preston, Preston passed to Galvin, and Galvin, in exactly the improvisational inspiration that makes him such a damaging five-eighth at heart, lifted his knee and banged it forward with his calf. He struck it hard enough that Gutho was able to let it trickle over the dead ball but the damage had already been done, since the sheer improbability of Galvin’s play had tempted Leilua to come in for late contact.

The Red V were staring down their biggest defensive challenge so far, as Hayward’s head was bandaged after a head clash with Holmes, but Critta opted to take the two for the first time, a sign of respect for what the Dragons had been able to achieve on their goal line. He was right to respect it too, for while the pair of Bulldogs penalties and a well-considered challenge now ensued, this next burst of blue and white momentum ended with arguably the critical defensive moment from St. George so far.

No sooner had Tupouniua joined the park than he lost the first carry of the restart into a double Couchman tackle. Backing an amped-up forward who had just left the bench can be a risky move and yet Critta’s judgement was on point here, since the replay clearly showed Toby’s shoulder making contact with Sitili’s face. That same confidence percolated Galvin’s run on the penultimate play, when he took an off-the-ground offload from Kikau, dummied right to wrongfoot Toby, fended right on Leilua and sliced straight past Stewart.

Galvin was only a few metres from the line when veteran Cook wrapped around him and the set came full circle with Tupouniua taking the final carry into Leilua, who did well to contain him on the chalk. It was becoming a pattern, though, for the Dogs to win penalties just when their goal line attack seemed to have been thwarted, and with Tracey down in back play due to a shoulder charge from Tuipulotu, Critta opted to leave the penalty kick and try his team’s luck attacking the chalk.

Cometh the hour cometh the man, as Galvin set up another Preston run only for Flanno to surge in and knock the footy free, in what was arguably the key defensive moment so far for St. George, who could have been staring down a spree of Canterbury tries if they’d allowed the rhythm to get away from them now. The last period before the sheds was ushered in by the most volatile set so far, and it began with Burton, like Atkinson before him, going for a torpedo bomb but not quite striking it right, forcing Tu to take a knee to collect it.

Critta was already coming in too fast to adjust the angle, so his shoulder slammed into Tu’s head as Kikau bundled on top – quite a baptism by fire for the Dragons debutant. A wave of adrenalin rippled across the park, as Kerr returned to the Red V jersey for the first time since 2023, and it intensified when the fans started baying for a late penalty contact from Kikau on Atkinson. The shot was considered marginal enough to play on but the adrenalin had been unleashed – and Leilua became the man to embody it on the very next tackle.

In the first great brainsnap of the year, Luciano planted his hand in Preston’s throat during a joint tackle with Galvin and Tupouniua, inducing Grant Atkins to hold a hurried conference with both Cook and Critta, instructing them to return to their troops and to inform them that there would be no more “nonsense.” When play resumed the Dogs had their last accumulation of position before the break, with Mann making their 13^th carry inside the red zone on play three, and came close to a brilliant team try on the cusp of the siren.

It began with a Mann ball going awry on the right edge, missing Galvin and forcing Montoya to scoop it up back at the thirty. Marcelo did a noble job building something from nothing, defying a Flanno ankle tap to offload through Kerr for Kikau, who in turn bumped off Tu and sent it out via Critta for Kiraz to boot at speed from the sideline. Gutho took it on the full two metres out but once more the Dogs got a penalty on the chalk and this time Cookie lost St. George’s challenge by trying to contest it.

The blue and white automatically began packing the scrum from the twenty but Critta made his second captain’s call to take the penalty shot even though this was a much harder angle for the left-footer than when he decided to tap and go – way out on the left edge. Yet his judgement as captain was superb, slotting the Steeden through to ensure the crucial two point lead before the half time siren, much as he would boot through the winning field goal after another fifty minutes of gruelling to-and-fro football.

Both sides had remained injury free in the first stanza, a stark contrast to Drinky and Sharpe earlier in the day, and the second forty also began with about five minutes of end-to-end footy, a symmetry encapsulated in two players losing it backwards on successive sets: Tu into a Critta hit and Montoya when trying to collect an Atkinson kick on the full. Shortly after Tu’s fumble Suli had one of his best runs of the night, with a tough twelve-metre charge, but things went downhill for him shortly after.

For this time it was the Dragons who blinked first – specifically Suli, who lost the ball into a Hayes-Hayward-Mann combo, with Hayward doing especially good work to dislodge it from the crook of Suli’s elbow without an illegal strip. Likewise, Hayward took the force of his contact to the brink of legality as Suli’s head hit the ground hard enough to activate the HIA protocol, as tensions spilled over, Tuipulotu got up in Montoya’s face in the ensuing fracas, and St. George reached the nadir of their night when Gutho was pinged for dissent.

The Dogs were fired up on the next set, as a Galvin ball got Preston over the line, where it took five defenders to hold him up, and then, with all those bodies still out on the right, Galvin shifted the play to the other edge where he took a crack himself, barging into Su’A for a David-on-Goliath tackle before the left padding. Ryan Couchman managed to nab Kikau’s offload in the corner but knocked on in the process, and so Canterbury packed the scrum from the ten, with no question of taking the penalty kick now.

The result was possibly the most elegant try setup of the night, as Critta ran it on the left to catch Holmes offside, ensuring that Val had to be scrupulous about his position on the repeat scrum, an even harder task in that the hamstring issue that had plagued his off-season and kept him out of the Charity Shield now seemed to be limiting him once again. Sure enough the metre of space he was forced to concede to remain onside was the metre of space Critta needed to execute his most dazzling run and pass of the game.

Dancing his way onto Holmes’ outside, the Canterbury captain looked dangerous enough to bring in Tu from the wing, and in this position, poised between the debutant, who was coming in high, and the veteran, who was wrapped around his right leg, Critta chose the perfect moment in his fall to cantilever the offload out to the wing – a beautiful lofting no-looker that Kiraz was always going to ground, in a moment of pure Bulldogs synergy and serendipity with Critta delivering the Allegiant crowd a touch of the running back too.

Nevertheless, with Crichton missing the sideline conversion these would be the final Canterbury points until the 89^th minute. On the other side of the Steeden, the Dragons hadn’t scored since the 15^th minute, and didn’t even have a linebreak to their name, so they needed to take it up a gear now – and yet for the moment the pressure produced a volatile passage of play, as the Red V’s nerves started to get the better of them, while the Dogs tried and failed to take advantage of the opportunities opened up by this fractured football.

It began on tackle four of the next set, when Xerri came in low to rattle Leilua, creating a ripple effect into Feagai’s dummy half pass, which was too high for Flanno, and forced Atkinson to take it back near his twenty. By contrast, the Dogs got six again on play one of the next set, and then a penalty on play one of the new set, thanks to an illegal steal from Hamish Stewart in a combined tackle with Toby Couchman, who started making up for it with a tough shot to contain Burton on the brink of the St. George ten.

The Dragons couldn’t concede another try here and so they got lucky when the right sweep came apart, as Xerri flicked on a beautiful ball that Montoya really should have landed. Emboldened by this error, Cook responed with one of his best dummy half runs of the night midway through the next set, garnering fifteen metres to cross halfway and glimpse open space, only for the ever-reliable Xerri to chop him down, so it was disappointing when once again St. George didn’t contest the kick, a Flanno bomb that Montoya secured easily.

Still, this forced the Dogs to really work it off their line and the Dragons’ confidence grew when Tupouniua fumbled the footy on play four. With a scrum just over the twenty, Cook, who had 39 tackles under his belt by now, attempted to repeat his splendid dummy half run, collecting the footy from Stewart and accelerating off the right boot into the red zone, only for Tupouniua to read the play perfectly. They needed one more convincing attacking play here, and Atkinson provided it with a crossfield chip that won them a fresh set. 

With their best position of the game the Dragons now finally found that next gear, starting with a Toby Couchman run that saw Tracey, Mann and Preston scramble to hold him up beside the left padding. On the penultimate play Su’A charged into the line, where Burton came in low and Critta on top, and for the second time tonight big Jaydn turned 180 degrees and offloaded to Gutho. Rather than make a play himself, the King simply reached out a hand to loft it on for Holmes to muscle his way up the edge and pop out the assist to Tu.

In a fairytale finish, the 27-year-old debutant landed Steeden-first before Tracey could bump him dead – an incredible moment for a young man who’d been told at the age of eight that he’d never play contact sports again, didn’t switch to League until he was eighteen, had struggled with both family loss and chronic anxiety, and had now finally come into his own beneath the Vegas lights. Tu personified the (literal) underdog Dragons at this point and so his try was every bit as inspiring as Critta’s monumental dodge of Holmes.

With Val shanking the conversion out to the left we were still at a two-point game and the Dragons looked like a new team on the restart, especially with Suli back in action after passing his HIA. Burton now made two big plays in quick succession, although neither of them yielded a try, the first of which came at the end of the next Canterbury set, when he grubbered on the fourth, scooped up the bounce just over the forty, and shifted it eight metres later in to Galvin, who was brought down by a desperate Flanno tackle.

The end of the set wasn’t as great for Burton, who should have taken the initiative to call the play out to the left but instead let Galvin move it right, where Toby Couchman contained Xerri in the ten. Still, Burton had another great finisher in him, responding to a soaring kick from Atkinson with an even more towering bomb that Tu was forced to take in goal as the chase tumbled on top of him. With Gutho booting the dropout over the line on the full the Dogs had a fresh set in the ten and their best chance since Kiraz’s try.

There were shades of Galvin’s Preston linkups with a short ball that would have nabbed Hayes a try if not for a low shot from Gutho and the Dogs did look to be building towards something on the back of it. However, play paused on the fourth, when Burton’s ankle got caught beneath a Toby Couchman tackle, and while Burton was fine to continue, it cost the set some momentum, despite ending with a lovely tip-on from Burton to Kikau, who flicked it on for Kiraz to come off his wing and meet the full brunt of Atkinson’s line speed.

Now it was Tracey’s turn for two brilliant plays – and again the Dragons line stayed strong, as Tu left with cramps after 14 runs, 4 tackle busts, an offload, a linebreak and a try, and Feagai came off the bench to contain a soaring Burton bomb. Yet Feagai ushered in Tracey’s best return of the night on the next set, when he knocked back an Atkinson bomb at the twenty for the Canterbury custodian to beat Atkinson at the forty, bust through Gutho at the other forty, and shift it for Salmon to offload back to him in turn at the red zone.

Tracey ended it with an inside ball to Galvin, who was brought down midfield by Cook and Ryan Couchman, and then executed what should have been one of the great assists of the night – a lofting harbour bridge ball that Montoya should have been able to take while elduing the monster shot that Tuipulotu put on to bang him into touch. It was a great play from the number 2, but the Red V needed to do more than defend – with only 9-33 play-the-balls in the opposition twenty, innovative attack was demanded now.

The next set didn’t do much to change that – there was no competition beneath Flanno’s kick, which Montoya took pretty comfortably – and nor did the next, a series of conservative runs up the middle following by a kick just over halfway. Basically the Dragons were relying on a Canterbury mistake to do the job for them and amazingly that strategy worked, when the Dogs received a penalty in possession on the next set, which despite its eventual downfall started as one of their most promising since Kiraz crossed over.

Kiraz himself played a key role in it, taking Atkinson’s kick in the ten and offloading through a Feagai ankle tap for Tracey to shape for the wing, only to dart back in field, elude a second Feagai shot and then sail it out for Critta to arrive on the brink of the thirty. Kiraz followed with a terrific one-handed carry to notch up another ten metres and offloaded back to King, who in the midst of so much extemporised play found himself caught offside, meaning the Dragons had a penalty only 35 metres out from the Canterbury line.

Holmes’ hammy was still acting up so kicking duties fell to Flanno, who slotted it through to lock up the score at 14-14 with six minutes to go. Of all the periods in the game, this was peak asynchronicity between Galvin and Burton, who hadn’t gelled enough yet for proper communication in the event of a field goal. As a result the Dogs botched three opportunities to set up a winning kick, and didn’t get to a single field goal attempt in regular time, while it would take Critta to boot through the winning point at the very end of golden point.

Canterbury’s first chance came two plays into the restart, when Suli lost the footy into some chest-rattling contact with Salmon, as King came in low, energised by the fallout of his error. Despite the high stakes, the Dogs delivered one of their least inspired sets of the night now, marching it up the middle with no apparent communication between Galvin and Burton, no plan in place for Burto to take the kick from midfield, and a fairly forlorn right sweep on the last that ended with the Dragons disposing of Xerri without much trouble.

Their second chance came on their next set, when Kikau found a bit of space up the left, got outside Atkinson and passed back in for Critta, who should have laid the foundation for the field goal but instead rushed the ball for Kiraz and ended up lobbing a forward pass with three tackles left. Between Critta, Burton and Galvin there was a bit of a leadership crisis in the Bulldogs spine during these final moments, while even the limping Holmes was more organised, floating behind the St. George pack to take the shot if it was needed.

If there was any doubt about Holmes’ struggles then it was confirmed when he made the first and only field goal attempt before full time, shanking it out to the left in a totally uncharacteristic error, where Kiraz took it on the full for the Dogs’ third and last chance to set up the kick. Montoya burst into space to hit the opposition forty, the Dogs rapidly spread it left, Kikau added some metres to make it to the ten, then sent it back inside for Tracey to set up the field goal position – and Tracey fumbled it just before the siren.

The stage was set for the first golden point in Vegas and the Dogs had the upper hand as far as the stats were concerned – of 16 golden point matches they’d won 12, lost 3 and drawn 1, while of 21 golden point matches the Dragons had won 6, lost 14 and drawn 1. Those stats would play out tonight, although not in the first half of extra time, which saw Su’A charge down a Burton field goal attempt, Tracey charge down a Flanno field goal attempt, and Holmes spray his own 45-metre kick out to the left five seconds before the break.

Canterbury were a bit flustered when they resumed, struggling for position on the first set back, and then pausing when Critta copped a cramp from a Feagai legs tackle. Things got even more chaotic at the end of the set, when Hayward’s pass went straight through the legs of Tupouniua, costing them fifteen metres when they were already in their own end. Galvin saved the day, scooping it up and sending it out to Preston for the kick, in the last distant echo of their opening try, before Preston dragged Gutho back on the return.

This Galvin-Preston combo was the critical settler, especially once Atkinson’s second field goal was taken by Tracey on the full for seven tackles, with ninety seconds on the clock. With a little over a minute, Canterbury got a penalty on the brink of halfway, when Couchman stripped the footy with Cook also in the tackle, and were faced with an agonising decision – whether to kick the penalty goal two metres into their own end or spend a couple of plays attempting to set up the field in goal in the final forty seconds.

They went for Option B, and ten seconds from the siren, Critta gathered all the frustrated loose threads of this game into an instantly iconic field goal, booting it through in a splendid image of leadership under pressure to commence the Dogs’ 2026 campaign. It’d be hard to think of a better deserved bye than what Canterbury would enjoy in Round 2, especially with the travel back from Vegas, while the Dragons had suffered an all-too-familiar loss in a tight game, and had the Storm, of all teams, to contend with when they returned to Sydney.