Lachlan Galvin named to play despite hand injury
Jasper Bruce |
Canterbury have named Lachlan Galvin to line up against the Warriors but the gun halfback may require painkilling injections for a hand injury.
The 20-year-old damaged his right hand during Sunday’s loss to his former club Wests Tigers but participated in Tuesday’s first training session since the shock defeat.
The Bulldogs will make the final call on Galvin’s fitness after their captain’s run but forward Josh Curran was confident he would be pushing to face the fourth-placed Warriors on Saturday night.
“Especially after the Tigers loss, the thing you want to do is just play football,” said Curran.
“We always talk about grit and playing with niggles or injuries and if he did it early in the (Tigers) game, then full credit to him. We really value him.”
Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo has named the same 17 that lost to the Tigers but back-up halfback Toby Sexton is listed in the reserves in case Galvin is unavailable.
As Canterbury looks to get its top-two tilt back on track, Curran wanted to see better ball control after the usually disciplined Bulldogs completed at only 67 per cent against the Tigers.
“You just look at the errors, it’s probably self-explanatory,” he said.
“We looked at them errors at the end of the day it’s on us (to improve), they’re the fundamentals of the game.”
The NRL is continuing to investigate a complaint from Canterbury officials that Tigers players made an offensive gesture to Bulldogs fans during Sunday’s game.
Several Tigers players were pictured making the “khod” gesture, an Arabic equivalent of “flipping the bird”, towards supporters of the Bulldogs, known for their large Middle Eastern contingent of fans.
Tigers fullback Jahream Bula would not be drawn to address the incident on Tuesday.
“I don’t really have any comment on that,” he said.
“I have no clue what happened there.”
NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo was hopeful of resolving the matter soon.
“Clearly we don’t want to be talking about these types of issues where there’s potential offence to people,” he said at the launch of the NRL’s Indigenous Round.
“So we’re having a very close look at what occurred and we’ll take the appropriate action in the near term.”
AAP
