– Picture gallery to come
Footscray will publicly blame its failures on its attack, not the
controversial sin-binning of Martin Naufahu, for a narrow 15-12 loss to
Power House in the Victorian Rugby Union premier 1 Dewar Shield
elimination final at Henry Turner Reserve on Saturday.
The complexion of the game changed on the back of the yellow card
to playmaker Naufahu early in the second half, even if it was not the
game’s determining factor.
The Bulldogs were leading 7-3 on the back of a Ben Filipo try before Naufahu was sent from the field for 10 minutes for a shoulder charge.
Bulldogs captain Allan Imo was shocked to see Naufahu carded for the second time in three weeks.
“It came as a surprise to me,” Imo said. “Our playmaker is one of
the smaller blokes on the field … there’s no blame laid on Martin, these
things happen.”
As good sides do, Power House made the numerical advantage pay,
scoring two tries with Naufahu off the ground and making it hard for the
Bulldogs to mount a fightback.
“As soon as they knew they had a man up, they put on the pace and
started playing with a higher intensity,” Imo said. “We just couldn’t
keep up with them a man down.”
The Bulldogs threw everything at the visitors in the countdown to full-time.
Tuipine Apineru charged over the line with two minutes to go, but
the ensuing restart fell short and Power House saw off the threat.
“The boys are quite dejected,” Imo said. “It’s the second year in a
row that we’ve made finals and we haven’t been able to get to that last
day.”
While the Bulldogs might have felt they were hard done by with the
Naufahu yellow card, they will look back on their dominance with 15 men
in the first half and inability to make it count as the major factor behind the loss.
The Bulldogs will watch the rest of the finals with envy. But they
can take some solace from knowing they are a young team with a bright
future.
“The good thing is the boys will learn from it,” said Imo of the elimation-final blow.
