The secret sauce at Canterbury? There is no secret sauce.
No mysterious herbs or spices. Definitely not 11 of them. Nothing in the water at Belmore.
Just old-fashioned rugby league. The Bulldogs sit atop the NRL ladder, undefeated, albeit after only four games this year, for the first time since 2016.
Considering the depths they’ve plunged in the past decade, the method of Cameron Ciraldo and Phil Gould’s rebuild offers both hope and a blueprint to every battling NRL rival – from the Dragons to the Eels and even poor old Wests Tigers.
Not just because they’ve built a well-rounded, smartly coached roster with the depth to cover injuries to two of their biggest earners. But because the Bulldogs rise has been built by prioritising the game’s simplest, yet hardest tasks.
The method: anyone can do it
Kick chase isn’t sexy. Nor is line speed. Or kick pressure. They’re the most basic elements of the game.
Right now, they’re what the Bulldogs do better than any other side. To the point the least attractive elements of rugby league are rightly being celebrated – at least when Canterbury attacks them.
The Bulldogs NRL-best defence (14.5 points per game) is founded on a rushing line speed that isn’t exactly spelled out in statistics, but it was plain for all to see in last Saturday’s defeat of Cronulla.
Champion Data pegs the Bulldogs’ pre-contact metres – the yardage covered by a ball-carrier before being met by a defender – at five metres per carry this season, sixth in the NRL.
Anecdotally though, Canterbury’s aggression had former skipper Michael Ennis in raptures in commentary as the Sharks were slowly but surely smothered into a 20-6 upset on their home turf – the Bulldogs’ first Shire win in 11 years.
A week earlier, Cronulla’s outside backs engineered two brilliant long-range tries against a ragged Rabbitohs defensive line – particularly on their kick chases.
South Sydney’s disjointed kick chase against Cronulla.Credit: Rugby League Writers
Taking note, Canterbury’s relentless line speed was matched whenever they chased kicks long and short.
As noted by Rugby League Writers’ Jason Oliver, the Sharks spied the tell-tale triangles – the space created either side of a defender outside a uniform line – in a disjointed Rabbitohs kick chase in round three, and duly exploited them.
The Bulldogs didn’t offer this to Cronulla’s Will Kennedy and his wingers.
Combined with swarming line speed and a couple of Josh Curran charge downs – the ultimate effort play – the territory battle Cronulla won so emphatically against South Sydney was turned back on them.
The horrors of a 66-0 thrashing from Newcastle midway through Ciraldo’s first season at Belmore has been a regular reference point, and as instructive as any ahead of Sunday’s clash against the Knights.
What Ciraldo described as a “dark day” saw Newcastle do whatever they pleased with a Bulldogs outfit missing a dozen first-graders after their reserve grade side also suffered a heavy loss.
The 2023 season couldn’t end quick enough for Cameron Ciraldo’s Canterbury.Credit: Getty
The lowest ebb of Canterbury’s rebuild made it painfully clear just how little depth the club’s roster had, and how far Ciraldo’s squad was from implementing his defence-focused game plan.
The Bulldogs turnover since has been stark. Of the 17 Ciraldo named for his first game as Canterbury coach in 2023, just Jacob Kiraz, Matt Burton, Max King, Reed Mahoney, Viliame Kikau and Jacob Preston remain.
Local juniors like Bailey Hayward, Kiraz, Kurtis Morrin and Lipoi Hopoi are the first of what is hoped to be many.
The recruitment blitz that yielded more utilities than a Monopoly board has delivered what Ciraldo craved – players willing to learn and above all compete, because an NRL utility is often honing the skills of a new position.
And if there is a shortcoming somewhere in their game, out-enthusing an opposition is the surest way to compensate for it.
Kurt Mann, Jaeman Salmon, Connor Tracey, Curran and Hayward all cover multiple positions while occupying an individual roster spot, and all bar Hayward have bought into Ciraldo’s uncompromising game plan after moving on from rival clubs.
Marquee recruits Stephen Crichton, Mahoney, Burton and Kikau have each played their instructional roles with lessons from Penrith and Parramatta (from what feels like a different Eels era now).
The Bulldogs were without $800,000 stars Burton and Kikau against Cronulla, and will be again against Newcastle.
Yet their left edge of Hayward, Jacob Preston and Bronson Xerri made that same channel an attacking focal point that dominated Cronulla – after claiming ascendancy with the bread-and-butter kick chase and defensive pressure.
It’s all very Penrith. And while the Bulldogs are on top after only four rounds and the Panthers have won four-straight titles, Ciraldo has brought unmistakable elements of Penrith in both personnel and philosophy to Belmore, chiefly because he helped build the Panthers dynasty.
Penrith, meanwhile, might just be starting to wobble with their shallowest playing stocks of the past five years.
The talent raids of rival clubs – with Canterbury at the forefront – has AAP able to compile an entire top 30 roster of former Panthers now playing elsewhere in the game. Ciraldo leads a crack coaching staff too.
Gould has detailed previously both his hesitations about taking on the Bulldogs rebuild and then bringing Ciraldo in to lead it. For the best part of a decade, excluding the Wests Tigers bin fire, this was the hardest job in rugby league.
The great hope for rivals watching on is how the Bulldogs have been reborn; with a beautifully simple fix.
