Lachlan Galvin has enjoyed a fairytale first game as an NRL halfback, throwing the match-winning pass in Canterbury’s 20-18 defeat of St George Illawarra at Accor Stadium.<\/p>\n
Just when the Bulldogs’ halves headache looked set to throb into next week, much-hyped mid-season recruit Galvin broke the Dragons’ hearts with a cut-out ball to Jethro Rinakama in the final 90 seconds.<\/p>\n
Dragons winger Tyrell Sloan was caught in-field and his opposite man Rinakama, in only his second game, slid over to seal a win that puts Galvin’s name up in lights.<\/p>\n
The move to bring Galvin over from Wests Tigers had been questioned as Cameron Ciraldo deliberated how best to use the 20-year-old in a team that had been atop the ladder when he arrived.<\/p>\n
But the magic play would’ve felt vindication for the finals-bound Dogs, who look to have delivered the hammer blow to the Dragons’ own top-eight hopes.<\/p>\n
Lachlan Galvin of the Bulldogs celebrates with teammates\u00a0Brendon Thorne\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Saints are still a mathematical chance but need to claim victory in all of their remaining games to finish the season with a winning record, and face Penrith, Canberra and the Warriors on the run home.<\/p>\n
Saturday night was the eighth time this season the Dragons have lost by 10 points or fewer.<\/p>\n
They looked home and hosed, stoically defending the Bulldogs on their goal-line in the final minutes having run in the first two tries of the second half.<\/p>\n
Clint Gutherson had thrown the last pass to Sione Finau that gave the 11th-placed Dragons an unlikely lead as mid-season recruit Galvin struggled to spark Canterbury after replacing Toby Sexton at halfback.<\/p>\n
But with his match-winning play, the former Tiger may well have brought the Bulldogs closer to answering the halves puzzle that appears critical to their premiership chances.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Galvin backed his captain Stephen Crichton up on the right side to score his side’s second try, and came close to putting Viliame Kikau over for four-pointers in each stanza.<\/p>\n
But Damien Cook made a heroic effort to hold Kikau up over the line, before referee Adam Gee found a knock-on before a Galvin kick found its way to the giant forward.<\/p>\n
Finau dislocated his shoulder in the act of scoring the Dragons’ third try, while Bulldogs recruit Sitili Tupouniua hurt his hamstring in his first game back from a lay-off with that same injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lachlan Galvin has enjoyed a fairytale first game as an NRL halfback, throwing the match-winning pass in Canterbury’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-5616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5616","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=5616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}