Cult hero slaps Bulldog in face, two Tigers sin-binned as Dogs win big

Tigers duo Alex Twal and Latu Fainu have a nervous wait with the match review committee after ill discipline left their team down to 11 men against the Bulldogs.

Benji Marshall could not hide his disappointment as he watched his team suffer a 32-0 thrashing on Saturday, with Fainu and Twal sent to the sin bin minutes apart.

Fainu was the first to head down the tunnel late in the second half after he slid in, dropped low and flipped Bulldogs prop Leo Thompson onto his head.

Twal joined him five minutes later after he was pinged for slapping Jaeman Salmon across the face, shortly after the pair had exchanged some tense words.

A replay of the incident appeared to show Twal had punched Salmon in the face, leaving Bulldogs players and fans pleading for a sin bin to be called. A closer angle of the cult hero’s actions confirmed it was a slap, which is still not allowed.

“He is gone, you can’t do that,” Michael Ennis said in commentary on Fox League.

“The Dogs fans are calling for him to go to the bin. They are going berserk here.”

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With the pair in the sin bin, the Tigers struggled to hold out the Bulldogs, with Matt Burton crossing for a try before Josh Curran bagged a double.

Twal had failed to calm down when he returned from the sin bin with 30 seconds left on the clock, immediately firing into a tackle on Salmon again before turning his attention to a nearby Curran. The pair were caught in a bit of push and shove before the referee signalled that the game had concluded.

The benefits of having a genuine halfback in Sean O’Sullivan to accompany Lachlan Galvin opened the doors for the Bulldogs to take control early, needing less than two minutes on the field to come up with their first points.

O’Sullivan nailed a 40/20 after the side completed their first set, and his teammates capitalised on that to send Jethro Rinakama sliding over in the corner.

Five minutes later, the Tigers defence had still not adapted to the power of the home side. Galvin, a former Tiger, put in a neat grubber towards the in-goal that was swept up beautifully by Curran to score the club’s second try.

“The Dogs have come flying out of the blocks,” Ennis said.

“Benji knows the Tigers are in deep trouble.”

Marshall did not wait much longer before he pulled the pin and made his first substitution, injecting Api Koroisau into the match in the 15th minute.

But even with their returning skipper, who was sporting a black eye, on the field, the Tigers could not stop the Bulldogs from finding the tryline again. This time, the men in blue and white found the line via Rinakama again in the corner, however he was denied by the Bunker due to a knock-on in the build-up.

That denied try did not worry the hosts, who simply got back to work and eventually sent Jacob Preston crashing over to bring the scoreline to 18-0.

Former Bulldogs captain Ennis hailed O’Sullivan.

“You cannot put a price on someone that since the age of six or seven has just played as a halfback,” he said after watching O’Sullivan unite with Galvin to set up Preston’s try.

“You look at the side who are leading the [competition] ... They have these types of players that have played halfback since they were six and have years of representative (football) behind them. We can see that already with O’Sullivan.”

The impact of rival playmaker Jarome Luai was not as influential for his team, as he was met by a chorus of boos each time he touched the ball while he and his teammates scrambled to find the answers to stop the Bulldogs.

Ennis called for Luai to “chase the moment” and “inject some life” into his team, but his efforts were not enough to inspire a try before half-time.