The resurgent West Bulldogs continued their winning ways with a dominant second-half performance to defeat GPS 36-15 at Ashgrove in the Sumo Energy Hospital Cup.
Last Saturday's success has pushed the Bulldogs to third after four wins and a draw since the embarrassing 76-12 loss to Brothers in May.
With four matches still to play to settle the make-up of the top four, the Bulldogs (39 points) sit behind Brothers (52) and Norths (41). Easts (36), University of Queensland (36) and premiers Bond University (35) are close behind.
It means a high-stakes clash is in store on Saturday when Wests venture to St Lucia to face the hot-and-cold UQ.
Last weekend against GPS, Wests tallied four second-half tries while adding a penalty goal through flyhalf Harry McLaughlin-Phillips to outscore the locals 31-5 after the break.
Asked about the message at halftime, scrumhalf Harry Raff said: “We just had to rip into our defence, making sure we’re getting our fold right and just intent and control in attack”.
Wests displayed an excellent ability to move the ball accurately to the outside channels throughout the match. This allowed for outside runners to build momentum and create attacking opportunities.
It was a beautiful cut-out pass by fullback Edan Zaupa that was the catalyst for the opening try. It was capped off by try scorer Ben Navosailagi putting a grubber ahead before regathering to score in the corner.
After 20 minutes of attritional rugby in between the 22s, GPS found their way through for points.
It was a simple shape and hands that led to winger Aisea Nawai scoring in the corner. The scores were locked at 5-5, with GPS failing to convert any of their three tries on the afternoon.
Nawai played another instrumental part in GPS's second try.
After a scuffed bomb kick, it Nawai's ability was to retrieve the ball and lay it off to outside centre Oskar Enasio, who raced away to give GPS a 10-5 lead.
It was a physical encounter with massive hits from both teams a hallmark of the first half.
McLaughlin-Phillips fed off unstructured play to retrieve the loose ball, and the Gallopers were nowhere in sight down the sideline. A perfectly timed pass to lock Dominic Thygesen set up his silky sleight-of-hand offload on the inside to put the supporting Raff in untouched.
McLaughlin-Phillips converted to make it 12-10. He converted four of the five Bulldogs tries.
One try quickly became two in the space of five minutes for Wests.
Captain and hooker Leopino Maupese fired a pinpoint pass at the second receiver, with oncoming traffic, to outside centre Maika Tuitubou to give him a free lane to the try line.
GPS continued to toil away but couldn’t capitalise on some domination at scrum time.
It was the rampaging Tuitubou who broke multiple tackles during a 20-metre charge before producing a miraculous offload for Ryan Shaw to cap off another long-range try for the Bulldogs.
This put the game out of reach at 26-10 with 15 to go.
The Gallopers got one back late by way of a pinpoint cross-field kick from former Queensland Red Bryce Hegarty to find exciting winger Nawai for his second.
It was reserve scrumhalf James Alexander crossing beforehand to cement the result for the Bulldogs.
Raff said it is important to take it game by game in a tight competition.
“It's only two or three points within the middle four of the ladder. So literally take it game by game, 'next job' type mentality for us," he said.
In the other matches, Brothers beat Bond University 52-36 on the Gold Coast, Norths dealt with Souths 45-28 and UQ's finals bid gathered steam with a 47-26 victory over Sunnybank.
