RUGBY UNION
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TWELVE months ago the Bathurst Bulldogs were fighting for a place in the top five, but when they make the trip to Narromine’s Cale Oval tomorrow it will be as the Central West Rugby Union competition leaders.
At this point in the 2014 season the Bulldogs had only won three of their six games, but now they are on a five-game winning streak and hot favourites to extend that.
While the Bathurst outfit may still have room for improvement, they have responded well since losing their season opener to Emus. In contrast their opponents tomorrow, the Narromine Gorillas, are yet to win a game.
The Gorillas are averaging less than 10 points a match while in contrast, the Bulldogs have amassed 192 this season and earned a bonus point each time they have taken to the field.
Though Cale Oval has been place that is notoriously hard for visiting teams to find success at in recent seasons – the Bulldogs grinding out a tough 31-20 victory last year – this time around the Bathurst outfit is expected to do it much easier.
Still, Bulldogs co-coach Scott Johnston knows better than to call the result a given.
“For us, we have a lot of history with Narromine in our games there where we’ve lost grand finals and won one. I expect this week will be another challenging game,” Johnston said.
“They’ve lost some players in key positions. They had an older side last year and a few of them have gone away now and some younger guys are coming through.
“We haven’t seen much of them though, only their results, so the best thing we can do is continue to focus on what we can improve.”
And following on from last Saturday’s win 30-19 over Mudgee, there are things that need improving.
Bulldogs led that contest 30-0 before switching off and allowing the Wombats to get a sniff.
“Everything’s been going well and we’ve been playing some terrific football. I thought so far this year our consistency’s been good. That last 20 minutes of last week we didn’t touch the ball much and Mudgee made the most of it, but I don’t think that’s been much of a problem for us this year until then,” he said.
“We’ve done a lot of work on the breakdown over the last week as one area we can improve. I think our ball running has remained one of our best skills this year.”
For the first time in several weeks, the Bulldogs will be forced into making changes to their side.
Dylan Sinclair will be asked to step up to scrumhalf, as he did in the second half of last Saturday’s match against Mudgee, with Tom Hollis expected to be out for three weeks with a knee injury.
Both lock Alistair Fryer and centre Tom Joseph will be away, with Ollie Crowe and Johnston replacing them.
The match will kick off at 3.15pm.
BATHURST BULLDOGS: 1 Chris Plunkett, 2 Mark Donnelley, 3 Sean Fogarty, 4 Izaak Breen, 5 Lachlan Bull, 6 Ollie Crowe, 7 Peter Fitzsimmons, 8 Adam Dwyer, 9 Dylan Sinclair, 10 Steven Locke (c), 11 Tyson Smith, 12 Scott Johnston, 13 Josh Lees, 14 Justin Mobbs, 15 Phil Tonkin.