Rabbitohs 12 Bulldogs 25
It was Easter: we know this because everyone at ANZ Stadium, Homebush Bay, got a gold-foil chocolate egg, and some of the burly singlet-wearing woodchoppers from the Royal Easter Show next door turned up as part of the pre-game entertainment.
It was a blockbuster game: we know this because American rapper LL Cool J, aka Ladies Love James Cool, aka James Todd Smith III, was in the stands wearing dark sunglasses at nine at night.
And we know the Easter bunny was among the crowd of 21,839, and possibly the tooth fairy, too, because the most unlikely event happened early in the match: the Bulldogs won a scrum against the feed. So shocking was this development, Bulldogs lock Reni Maitua promptly knocked the ball on.
The game also featured a first: the introduction of a quick video replay to determine if a lost ball was, in fact, a strip. Midway through the first half, referee Sean Hampstead changed a decision of a knock-on against the Rabbitohs to a penalty to them, just as the scrum was about to be set.
It was that kind of game for the Bulldogs, who looked brilliant when they had the ball, spreading it wide, but frustratingly for their fans, failing in the final stages. But the Rabbitohs, too, were their own worst enemy. It made for a topsy-turvy game that swooped from end to end, with momentum quickly shifting between the two sides.
When the Bulldogs scored with just 30 seconds to go to half-time, everyone sensed that perhaps Steve Folkes's men had finally found their groove. They were without the brilliant Sonny Bill Williams, who failed a last-minute fitness test on his upper-calf strain and, while the straight-running Brad Morrin filled in, overall the Bulldogs lacked early cohesion.
At one stage Hazem El Masri got away with a volunteer tackle in some confusion down the sideline and Daniel Holdsworth kicked the ball dead in goal from a kick-off and had a couple of handling errors.
But Willie Tonga's try signalled a new urgency to the Bulldogs' play.
Within 10 minutes either side of half-time, the Bulldogs went from 12-6 down to leading 18-12. Unexpectedly, about that time Souths had their best players - Michael Greenfield, David Kidwell, Roy Asotasi and Isaac Luke - on the interchange bench, allowing the Bulldogs space to exploit the fringes of the Souths defence.
The Bulldogs centres went on a scoring spree, first Tonga, with a dubious grounding of the ball, and then a nicely timed corner dive by Tim Winitana. With 10 minutes to go, Holdsworth set up a nice ball for the angled running of fullback Luke Patten to crash through the Rabbitohs defence, and with five minutes to go the halfback kicked a field goal to establish a 13-point break.
It was an unsatisfactory result for the Rabbitohs, who had taken the early lead when debutant Ben Lowe crashed over off a simple switch-back play set up by five-eighth Ben Rogers in the 17th minute. Then in a golden period of play in which the Rabbitohs dominated possession before half-time, Craig Wing's replacement, Eddie Paea, just 20, was composed and adventurous. In the 29th minute he scored a magical try, sidestepping between Bulldogs big men Andrew Ryan and Jarrad Hickey, stumbling after a Patten ankle tap but recovering niftily to score near the posts. For the next 10 minutes he peppered the Dogs line with some cross-field bombs for Nathan Merritt, but alas, while they were accurate, none came off.
In the latter stages, South Sydney had a another hefty round of possession, forcing four sets of goal-line drop-outs. At one point they had a two-man overlap, but Rogers switched back inside when a simple pass to his outside man would have resulted in a critical, and perhaps match-turning, try.
Rabbitohs coach Jason Taylor said it would take time to get used to only having 10 interchanges, not 12.
"If you bring some off earlier than others then you are bringing them off before they are tired, it's still a learning curve," he said.
BULLDOGS 25 (L Patten W Tonga M Utai T Winitana tries H El Masri 4 goals D Holdsworth field goal) bt SOUTH SYDNEY 12 (B Lowe E Paea tries I Luke 2 goals) at ANZ Stadium. Referee: Sean Hampstead. Crowd: 21,839.
