Luke Thompson has called for his badly beaten Bulldogs to dish up “something better” against the Roosters this weekend, as Canterbury Bankstown looks to bounce back from a horrible 66–0 thrashing.
Last weekend the Bulldogs went down, hard.
Canterbury’s first twenty minutes against Manly wasn’t all bad, though Reuben Garrick and Tom Trbojevic (who would later march on to a hat-trick) both scored early.
The next sixty, however, were truly dire. Trbojevic and winger Jason Saab enjoyed three tries apiece in the 66-point rampage. Garrick notched two and a perfect eleven out of eleven goals. Toafofoa Sipley and Karl Lawton got in on the action too, as the Sea Eagles clocked up a monster eleven tries to zip boilover.
The Bankwest Stadium slaughter was, in part, due to the Bulldogs’ COVID-19 issues; several of their players had been sidelined for failing to follow protocols.
That’s not to say it was a surprise either though. The Canterbury-Bankstown club have been on the wrong end of plenty of lopsided scores so far this season, and find themselves sitting dead last in the 2021 premiership with just two wins.
Luke Thompson has demanded his Bulldogs “put the game behind them”. The focus now, he says, is the future; namely, their Round 17 meeting with the Roosters this Saturday.
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“It unsettled us, so many new faces [last week], but there’s no excuses. We need to work better as a team, and that’s something we’ve addressed,” the Englishman told NRL media during the week. “Last weekend was disappointing.”
“When you look at the scoreboard, 66-0, doesn’t look too great. No one likes to be on that side of that scoreline, so we’ve got a fire in the belly for the Roosters.
“We’ve got a few boys back from the COVID [situation] so we’re going to put that behind us now. They’ve been back into training. They apologised they weren’t available to help the team out. We have to make sure we work hard this week and focus on the Roosters. Our last few games haven’t been good enough.
“We have to focus on ourselves, bettering ourselves, and take a few things out of the game on the weekend, make sure we’re a lot better. Better than it has been.”
Thompson said he felt particularly bad for the Bulldogs coach, Trent Robinson, who had been drafting up plans, keeping spirits high, and pushing the team to “do better”. The 66-0 stung most after seeing him on the sideline, Thompson said.
The English forward said Robinson had already called to put the Manly thrashing in the past. “Trent works really hard with us so to dish up a performance like that with the scoreline is not good enough. He’s pretty upbeat and positive though, [so] he comes in this week and said we’ve got to put it behind us. We have to find a new gear for him.
“It’s all of us, one to thirteen, everyone has to do their job. That’s how we’ll lift, and we’ll have to be at least 8 out of 10 to beat the Roosters this round; they’re a really great football side.”
