Canterbury have confirmed their first top-four finish since 2012 but an injury to Jacob Kiraz soured their 28-4 defeat of Penrith, who fielded the least experienced team ever seen in the NRL era.<\/p>\n
Superstar winger Kiraz landed awkwardly on his left ankle fielding a kick late on Thursday night and needed assistance leaving the field at Accor Stadium.<\/p>\n
Kiraz could eventually hobble without support from trainers but early fears are that he has suffered a syndesmosis injury.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old came close to a NSW Origin debut this year and would be a significant loss for the Bulldogs as they fight for their first premiership since 2004.<\/p>\n
If Kiraz is unavailable, either journeyman Enari Tuala or rookie Jethro Rinakama would need to be called into the third-placed Bulldogs’ 17 at the most important point of the year.<\/p>\n
Second-rower Jacob Preston scored the first hat-trick of his NRL career to help the Bulldogs kick clear after some resistance from the unrecognisable Panthers in the first half.<\/p>\n
Jacob Preston of the Bulldogs celebrates with teammates after scoring a try\u00a0Cameron Spencer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
With an eye on finals, Ivan Cleary rested all but one man from the Panthers’ last game, playing a side with only 398 games of first-grade experience and four debutants.<\/p>\n
That number went to five when 18th man Jaxen Edgar was activated following game-ending concussions to Luke Sommerton and Sione Fonua.<\/p>\n
But the Panthers showed the defensive grit of their regular first-graders as they repeatedly repelled the Bulldogs, whose red zone fifth tackle options were particularly poor.<\/p>\n
Lachie Galvin put Josh Curran into space and then supported him for their first try, before a shift put Preston over for a 10-0 half-time lead.<\/p>\n
Galvin put Preston in for his next two tries, with the second-rower breaking through three tackles on the way to his third.<\/p>\n
Amid a form slump for regular fullback Dylan Edwards, off-contract Daine Laurie was Penrith’s best, helping hold Sitili Tupouniua and Connor Tracey up over the line in consecutive tackles at one point.<\/p>\n
In the second, he threw the bullet-like pass for Paul Alamoti to score the Panthers’ only try.<\/p>\n
But Penrith, for their grit in defence, never appeared a serious threat of piling points on, unable to create consistent opportunities or spend extended time up the other end of the park.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs are now guaranteed to finish either third or fourth, but leaping into the top two appears a bridge too far given Melbourne’s superior points differential.<\/p>\n
Last on the ladder after 12 rounds, the Panthers can finish the regular season as high as fifth but seventh or eighth appears likelier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canterbury have confirmed their first top-four finish since 2012 but an injury to Jacob Kiraz soured their 28-4…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-102136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}