Canterbury are bracing for life without Stephen Crichton after the Bulldogs imploded in a 32-24 NRL loss to South Sydney and their skipper succumbed to a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n
Crichton landed awkwardly in a tackle involving Rabbitohs duo Campbell Graham and Jack Wighton in the 43rd minute and failed to return to the field on Friday.<\/p>\n
Dogs coach Cameron Ciraldo said Crichton had suffered a grade two AC joint injury, which would rule the Samoa international out of facing former club Penrith next Thursday.<\/p>\n
Canterbury (2-2) meet the Panthers, Parramatta, premiers Brisbane and North Queensland over the next month.<\/p>\n
“It’s not looking great in there,” Ciraldo said.<\/p>\n
“They (the medical team) are saying a high grade two, grade three possibly AC – that’s the initial thoughts on it so he’ll be out for a while.<\/p>\n
“It’s an opportunity for someone else.”<\/p>\n
At the time their star centre went down the tunnel at Accor Stadium Canterbury were leading 18-12.<\/p>\n
But they finished the second half by completing just 40 per cent of their sets, conceding six penalties and making 12 errors.<\/p>\n
Only a late try to fullback Connor Tracey prevented Souths from keeping the Bulldogs scoreless in the second half.<\/p>\n
Ciraldo resisted the chance to throw disgruntled centre Bronson Xerri in as a straight-swap replacement for Crichton, instead shifting five-eighth Matt Burton to centre and bringing Sean O’Sullivan into the halves.<\/p>\n
“Bronson was there covering the wing and centre but when you lose your best communicator,” Ciraldo said.<\/p>\n
“I needed to get another communicator out there, and Sean’s one of the best at that.”<\/p>\n
But after the reshuffle, the Dogs lost all fluency in attack as Souths laid on 20 second-half points to claim a third win from their opening four games.<\/p>\n
Latrell Mitchell grabbed two tries and kicked six goals, finishing the match at fullback after Jye Gray went off for a head injury assessment.<\/p>\n
Souths coach Wayne Bennett said Gray passed his test and will be fit to face Canberra next week, but admitted to concern over Keaon Koloamatangi who picked up a suspected medial ligament injury.<\/p>\n
Souths raced into an early lead in front of a crowd of 49,813 when Alex Johnston picked off a Tracey pass and ran 90m to score in the fifth minute.<\/p>\n
Marcelo Montoya and Mitchell traded tries before Canterbury hit the front foot just before the break.<\/p>\n
Lachlan Galvin dived on his own kick to the in-goal as a rampaging Sitili Tupouniua crashed over to make it 18-12 at the break.<\/p>\n
But after Crichton’s injury, Canterbury fell apart with Cameron Murray, Tallis Duncan and Mitchell pulling Souths out of sight.<\/p>\n
“We played somewhere near our potential and what we’ve got in the team,” Bennett said.<\/p>\n
“The last time we played we were far off that – we weren’t perfect today, but we look closer to where we want to go.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canterbury are bracing for life without Stephen Crichton after the Bulldogs imploded in a 32-24 NRL loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-582514","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\/582514","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=582514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}