BATHURST Bulldogs coach Nathan Pearce feels his side has been “treading water” to this point of the Blowes Clothing Cup season, but now he is urging them to make a splash.
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This Saturday Bulldogs will face Forbes in the preliminary final at Grinsted Oval, the pair set to fight it out for the remaining spot in the decider alongside Orange Emus.
While Forbes fell just short in its bid to be the first side through to the grand final last Saturday, Pearce’s side has advanced to this point after sudden-death games against Orange City and Dubbo Kangaroos.
Still, the Bathurst coach does not think his side has produced the sort of rugby he knows they are capable of.
“I don’t think we’ve hit our straps yet this season, I feel like we’ve kind of been treading water to get to this stage of the season,” he said.
“I feel like we are very much capable of going up there and beating them, but on form so far this season, you’d have to have Forbes as the forthright favourite, especially at home.
“I always like being the underdog. There is now doubt we haven’t been a top two side on form this year – Forbes and Emus have been that.”
Since falling 18-9 to the Platypi in last season’s preliminary final at Grinsted Oval, Bulldogs have not managed to get the better of Forbes.
The Bathurst side has suffered 27-17 and 24-13 defeats at the hands of last year’s grand finalists.
Pearce said the key to snapping that losing streak on Saturday will be sticking to their style of rugby instead of being drawn into Forbes’ preferred structures.
“Forbes have a really good ability to get you to play their game. They’ve got a fairly simple, and I say simple with the utmost respect, structure in the way they play and they are very good at executing it,” Pearce said.
“They are very good at bringing you into their game which is nice and tight, kick for territory, compete well at the set piece. They also contest very well at the breakdown when we’ve got the ball.
“So it is going to be up to us to break those shackles, impose the type of footy we want to play on them.
“Our breakdown work needs to be a lot better than it was up in Dubbo and our ability to execute with the ball in hand has been letting us down badly recently.
“We need to be a lot better if we are going to beat their press defence, which they do very well at.”
For the first time this season, Bulldogs will have the same starting XV as they used the previous week.
Still, he knows they must be better disciplined than they were in the minor semi-final win against Dubbo Kangaroos. They conceded 22 penalties.
“It’s a good time of the year to be able to say you’ve got an unchanged side, but the reality is that we can’t go in there and play the same type of footy that we have been playing, we need to step it up,” he said.
“[Last week] We defended well and executed the tackles, but we gave away a lot of penalties by going too hard at the breakdown and not being onside at critical stages of the game. To be honest, I think we were lucky not to have someone in the bin 25 minutes in.”
Saturday’s preliminary final kicks-off at 3.15pm.