The Bulldogs are desperate to bounce back after last week’s bitter loss where they led 32-22 with five minutes remaining before the Wests Tigers scored two converted tries to steal the most unlikely of victories.
“The boys are obviously very upset, which is good,” said Bulldogs coach Andy Patmore. “I’m glad they’re upset by it. We did lots of good things as well and we really want to focus on the positives while we work on those areas from last week and the couple of lapses we had.”
Canterbury face a hard task in trying to breach a stubborn Wyong defence that held out the Newcastle Knights for 72 minutes in last week’s 18-6 win.
“It’s an old cliché but we’re worried about a couple things on our side of the field first,” Patmore said. “A bit of our defensive work needs to improve and we certainly need to restrict sides to less than 30 points. I think our attack is good enough to score some points.”
That’s much easier said than done however with the Roos, as the Sydney Roosters’ feeder club has the benefit of extensive first-grade experience.
“They have some quality players there,” Patmore said. “They’ve got some of the boys from the Roosters all the way through from Mitch Williams and Yileen Gordon, who has a lot of NRL games.”
“Their back-row is big and strong and that gives them a lot of momentum with a hooker like Williams that presents a lot of danger to us. We’ll definitely focus on it and if we can control that, we should go ok.”
Canterbury v Wyong: Belmore Sports Ground, Saturday 28 March, 4.00pm
This article first appeared on www.nswrl.com.au
