The Bulldogs crashed back down to earth with a heavy defeat to the Broncos on Thursday night in a game coach Cameron Ciraldo labelled a “ball-ache”.
Entering the clash unbeaten, the Bulldogs were blown off the park in the first half, conceding four tries in the first 18 minutes
Ciraldo noted the lessons his side would have learned, but admitted he was “filthy” with their performance early in the game.
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“We were certainly humbled in that first half,” Ciraldo said.
“We received a lot of praise in the first six weeks and probably rightly so at times but that first half wasn’t good enough.
“The Broncos came here with a lot of desperation and were very good so credit to them.
“I sort of thought we had a lot of guys working hard but we had a couple of guys that were off.
“It was a comedy of errors but we’ll walk away with plenty of lessons tonight. Number one we’re not good enough to be beaten by the laws of the game like that. Number two we’re not good enough to play as individuals and number three, we never give up.
“I’m really proud of the second half but I’m filthy at the first half.”
It was a contest filled with plenty of sin bin drama, with four players receiving their marching orders, three of those being Bulldogs.
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Ciraldo was asked whether he agreed with those decisions and took aim with the lack of “flow” in the game.
“I don’t know. There was so much going on tonight. There was no flow to the game and it was one of those games that was probably hard to watch,” he said.
“Everything that could get penalised got penalised and everything got picked up. It was a ball-ache to watch for me so I’m sure everyone else felt the same.
“I put that down (sin bins) to us trying too hard. We were trying so hard and a couple of high tackles on the back of that (slow start). We’ve been pretty disciplined so we’ll fix that pretty quickly.”
The first half was a stark difference from what we’ve seen from the Bulldogs across their first six games where they’ve allowed just 58 points in total.
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Despite the fact they clearly looked shell-shocked and no match for the Broncos, captain Stephen Crichton isn’t putting it down to an attitude issue.
“I don’t feel like we were off, we just made it hard on ourselves,” Crichton said.
“We only had 30% of the ball in the first half so we defended a lot but if we give that amount of ball to a quality team, they are going to make you pay.
“I don’t feel like we went out there with the wrong energy we just missed the mark on a few things.”
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