Raiders produce second half blitz to down Dolphins
Melissa Woods |
Canberra have regrouped from an “embarrassing” first half to climb into the NRL top three after roaring home to topple the Dolphins 40-28 in their Sunday afternoon NRL clash.
The past two battles between the teams had been decided in golden point – both in the Raiders’ favour – but in their first meeting at Canberra’s GIO Stadium the green machine came up with the goods in emphatic style.
Kristian Woolf’s visitors looked in great shape at halftime with a 28-10 lead, appearing on track to set a new club benchmark of four successive wins.
Instead it was the Raiders who snared their fourth straight, rolling past their rivals by scoring the last five tries unanswered to cement the victory.
Coach Ricky Stuart was bitterly disappointed with Canberra’s opening 40 minutes and asked his players to show some heart in the Anzac round clash, with the team dedicating the match to club football assistant Brett Dickson, who is ex-military.
“My last message at halftime was, ‘Go and show me what you’ve got – what’s really underneath the jumper’, because in the first half it was really embarrassing,” Stuart said.
“That doesn’t take any credit away from the brilliance that the Dolphins played with, who were undermanned, with a heap of good players out, but they ran over us roughshod in the first half.”
Woolf lamented the loss of hard-working prop Daniel Saifiti, who suffered a shoulder injury after 30 minutes, with his team also playing Ray Stone as a stand-in hooker following the late withdrawal of Max Plath with a foot injury.
They were also missing hard-man Felise Kaufusi due to a knee injury.
Still, Woolf said there was no clear reason for his side’s fade-out.
“Obviously the second half was really disappointing as we put ourselves in a great position there, we played some great footy in the first half,” he said.
“For whatever reason, we just didn’t quite put that together in the second half.
“I think we just made too many errors coming out of our own end, we didn’t quite get our fifth play right in that second half and that put us under pressure and gave them too much opportunity.”
Canberrra winger Savelio Tamale opened the scoring but the Dolphins hit back with two almost identical tries through Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow and Herbie Farnworth, picking holes in the Raiders’ right edge.
The Queensland side kept piling on the points with another three first half tries with Jake Averillo scoring his team’s fifth in the 39th minute to leave the large crowd shell-shocked.
But the second half told a different story, with the Raiders building their way back into the match while holding the Dolphins scoreless.
A converted try scored by English second-rower Matty Nicholson locked up the scoreline at 28-28 and the signs looked ominous for the Dolphins as errors continued to take their toll.
The home side hit the front in the 71st minute when Jamayne Isaako fumbled a grubber and Sebastian Kris pounced to score
Halfback Jamal Fogarty, reportedly lured from Canberrra to Manly for the next season, iced the win after throwing a huge dummy and gliding through for the Raiders’ last try.
AAP
