Wild scenes at Leichhardt as golden Tigers shoot down Sharks, Raiders sink Dolphins after Ricky rev-up
All eyes were on Lachie Galvin in his return to first grade on Sunday but his contract circus was forgotten for 89 minutes as Wests Tigers pulled off an improbable extra-time win via an Adam Doueihi penalty goal.
In the game of the season, Cronulla fought back from 18-6 down before stuffing up several chances at a match-winning field goal.
Each team did likewise in the first period of extra time before Sharks prop Tom Hazelton gave away a stripping penalty late in extra time right in front of the posts and Doueihi booted the Steeden into a strong wind and through the sticks to kick-start wild scenes of jubilation.
The Tigers were a team torn apart last week after losing to Parramatta on the back of Galvin being dumped to reserve grade following his decision to tell the club he would be leaving at the end of next year.
If they can keep pulling off euphoric wins like this one, maybe he will change his mind.
Earlier on Sunday, the Raiders rallied from 28-10 down at half-time to sink the Dolphins 40-28 at GIO Stadium.
If there’s a swing that dramatic next weekend in the national capital we will have a new Prime Minister.
1. Galvin welcomed back into the fold
All eyes were on the young five-eighth after he was dumped for saying he’s leaving the club at the end of next year and then recalled following the Easter Monday loss to Parramatta.
He didn’t cop jeers but cheers from the Wests Tigers faithful at Leichhardt Oval from the moment he took the opening kick-off.
And all was forgotten eight minutes later when he switched from open side of the ruck to the blind and unfurled a superb offload despite a two-man tackle for Samuela Fainu to open the scoring.
Galvin took a back seat to Jarome Luai in the playmaking department. Perhaps that is an example of the “team first” mantra that Luai was trying to tell him about via social media.
He was trying hard but the 19-year-old was unable to recapture the attacking form which he displayed in the first six weeks of the season before his contract drama became the talk of the NRL.
But he produced the tackle of the match to bring down Hazelton a few metres from the line in the 80th minute when the rampaging Cronulla prop looked certain to score.
However, his desperate tackle meant the Tigers lived to fight another day and they hung on to record a memorable victory by the skin of their teeth.
2. Sharks bustled off their game
Schoolteachers will tell you that it can be hard to make students focus on windy days. The same can be said for footy players.
Cronulla played like a team that was distracted by the breeze for all but the last couple of minutes of the first half.
Their try to Ronaldo Mulitalo just before the break changed the momentum of the match and it came out of nowhere – Will Kennedy stood in a tackle near halfway and offloaded to Nicho Hynes who sprinted across the field to find his left winger roaring through the middle and he sprinted past Galvin and sidestepped through three other defenders to break his six-game scoring drought in spectacular fashion.
Cronulla had a huge gale at their back in the second half and even though they were finishing all over the Tigers, they kept shooting themselves in the foot.
They botched four field goal set-ups in the closing stages – “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” said Michael Ennis on Fox League as they unsuccessfully chanced their arm rather than taking the one-point option with a howling breeze at their back.
Hynes launched a booming effort from halfway which bounced clear after striking the upright and with their last set, they fumbled the ball out wide when the percentage play would have been to stay in front of the posts to take another strike.
They were still scattered in extra time and they have no one to blame but themselves for the final result.
3. Momentum swings with the wind and sin bins
They drew first blood when Galvin put Fainu over and his social media combatant, winger Sunia Turuva, touched down to make it 10-0 midway through the first half when he benefited from a skilful Starford To’a flick.
Mulitalo’s strike just before half-time made it a four-point gap at the interval before Cronulla were left a man down for 10 minutes when Briton Nikora was pinged for high contact on Jarome Luai.
They could have done with the extra body when a midfield bomb bounced back to Tallyn Da Silva with the bench hooker kicking again and regathering to make it 18-6.
Kennedy skipped clear of the cover defence after Mulitalo broke free down the left flank to halve the deficit before another sin-binning, to Fonua Pole, for an innocuous hit on Tom Hazelton let the Sharks off the hook after a bombed attacking raid.
Second-rower Billy Burns stood up Galvin on the next set to square the ledger with 15 minutes remaining and set up the frenetic finish.
4. Raiders rally after Ricky’s rev-up
The Green Machine looked dead and buried after falling 18-10 behind and then conceding two more tries to the Dolphins just before half-time.
But this is the NRL’s grittiest line-up and once they got back into the contest from tries to Zac Hosking and Ethan Strange by the hour mark, there was an air of inevitability in their second-half comeback.
English forward Matty Nicholson backed up a break before Seb Kris pounced on a fumbled grubber and fittingly, Jamal Fogarty sealed the remarkable rise from the canvas with the final blow.
To say that Ricky Stuart was unimpressed with his team’s opening term would be something of an understatement.
“It was disappointing that first 40,” he said, showing restraint in the media conference that he did not use when addressing his players during his mid-game rev-up.
“What’s really underneath the jumper? Because in the first half it was really embarrassing.
“They ran over us roughshod in the first half.”
Canberra captain Joseph Tapine said it was “a nice little spray from coach”.
“He tested our character and put the challenge to us,” he said
“Mindset is a huge part of our game. Everyone thinks it’s physical but when it gets tough, it’s your mind that gets you through those tough times.”
5. Dolphins go to water
The NRL’s youngest club still has some growing up to do.
Leading 28-10 at half-time in Canberra, they had their opponents reeling but the Dolphins did not display the necessary maturity to close the game out.
An 18-point lead can be gobbled up quickly in the six-again era but calm heads did not prevail when Dolphins coach Kristian Woolf needed them most as Canberra mounted their late charge.
“I was really disappointed in that. We put ourselves in a great position when we played some great footy in the first half but for whatever reason, we didn’t put that together in the second half,” he said.
“We made too many errors coming out of our own end. We didn’t quite get to our fifth play well in that second half. That put us under pressure and gave them too much opportunity.”
Woolf said prop Daniel Saifiti being forced off with a shoulder injury late in the first half was a massive blow.
Dolphins skipper Tom Gilbert said they played like they wanted to be in dinnersuits in the second half and paid the price.
They were without injured duo Jeremy Marshall-King and Max Plath, which meant they were down to their third- and fourth-choice hookers in Ray Stone and Sean O’Sullivan but Woolf said that was no excuse for the way they capitulated from what should have been a winning position.
The Kick: Ronaldo’s dive gets a zero from the judges
Rugby league used to laugh at footballers called Ronaldo taking theatrical dives to win penalties.
Sharks winger Ronaldo Mulitalo produced an elaborate display of gamesmanship to feign injury after he was clipped by Jack Bird as he tried to escape the in-goal area.
It was a feather touch at worst and after referee Grant Atkins didn’t fall for Mulitalo’s ploy, the Sharks burned their captain’s challenge by claiming a penalty was warranted.
Thankfully the Bunker ruled the contact as “incidental”, the polite way of saying a crock of crap.
Diving is a by-product of the high contact crackdown where players are incentivised to exaggerate accidental high contact which previously went unpunished.
Even Sharks legend Paul Gallen was pleased that Mulitalo’s gamesmanship was not rewarded and “commonsense prevailed”.
“That would have been the death of the game if that had been given a penalty,” he said on Nine commentary.