After 9 straight losses, the Bulldogs have pulled off a brilliant victory against the Kangaroos at Telstra Dome to give Matthew Croft and Simon Garlick a winning send off for the last match of their careers.

The doggies built a decent lead in the 1^st half, scoring five unanswered goals in the 1^st quarter. However at the start of the 3^rd, they did their usual fall-away-while-ahead trick, letting the Kangaroos get to within 2 points after leading by 19. But this time they pulled back, kicking 8 in a row to seal the match.

Garlick & Croft providided a large part of the recovery

Garlick started a run of eight straight goals, slamming one through from a metre out after receiving a handball from a quick thinking Brad Johnson. Croft, the other swansong player of the evening, kicked three in four minutes in the middle of the Dogs’ streak; snapping one through and marking strongly in the goal-square on three other occasions.

It was 18 minutes of pure joy for the long-suffering Bulldogs supporters, who have endured a couple of difficult seasons with the team at the bottom of the ladder and miles from those preliminary finals of the 1990s.

The only trouble is that this sort of intensity & pressure seems to have come from wanting to give Garlick & Croft a good send off, when this should be the standard for the whole season.