Brave Bulldogs fight back to claim thriller against Eels

A big crowd were on hand to see an intensely fought match at Accor Stadium, with Bulldogs coming from behind to beat rivals Parramatta 22-18 in a thriller. 

In an end-to-end game, the Dogs were on the attack early, only thwarted from scoring the first try by a forward pass ruling.

Instead, it was the Eels who were first on the board, with the try to Blaize Talagi coming from some impressive backline play out to the right of the field, where the youngster had moved out to the wing to cover for the injured Maika Sivo.

The Bulldogs hit back soon after however with back-to-back efforts to take the lead, with Stephen Crichton, who was backing up from Origin duty, finishing off a backline play and finding open space to the line. 

The next try came five minutes later to Blake Wilson, after he was set up by a nice flick pass from captain Crichton.

In a see-sawing opening half, Parramatta were pressuring in attack and had three tries disallowed, but were still able to go to the break with a lead after Will Penisini crossed in the 33rd minute.

Halfback Mitchell Moses helped set up the play with a stepping run through the middle, before finding Bryce Cartwright who was able to wrap the ball around behind his defender to find his centre.

Canterbury suffered two injury blows in the opening half, with both Bailey Hayward and Josh Curran ruled out of the match after showing Category 1 symptoms after suffering head knocks. 

Despite their setback, the home side were still playing entertaining football and thought they had hit the lead just before the halftime break, with Wilson running in after collecting a massive Matt Burton bomb which was too much to handle for the Eels. However, that was overruled by the Bunker for players being offside from the kick. 

Leading 12-10 at the break, the Eels went further ahead early in the second half, with the Bulldogs left to rue a kick out on the full from Reed Mahoney which turned over possession.

Kelma Tuilagi was rewarded for a strong run for his second try of the season, with Moses kicking the conversion for an 18-10 lead. 

While the first half saw the Eels go unrewarded on multiple occasions despite making it over the line, that was the case for the Bulldogs in the second, with an obstruction call, a grounding on the dead-ball line and passing after being tackled amongst the reasons for being denied. 

They were finally able to post a second-half try after Connor Tracey sliced through  and found his captain in support. Burton kicked the conversion to only trail 18-16 with just over 10 minutes remaining in the match, setting up a grand stand finish.

The Bulldogs provided for their vocal fans, with Wilson scoring under the posts in the 74th minute, supporting a great effort from his fullback Tracey, who had made another key break.

Burton kicked his third conversion with the win pushing the Dogs up into seventh place on the ladder and saw them claim three straight wins for the first time since 2019.