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\n Jaeman Salmon and Alex Twal come together at Accor Stadium.
\n \u00a9Anthony Kourembanas
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Bulldogs back-rower Jaeman Salmon said he shook hands with Wests Tigers lock Alex Twal after full-time following a heated exchange that spiced up the final minutes of their Saturday night match at Accor Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs won 32-0 with the Wests Tigers not able to land a blow, figuratively speaking, before Twal\u2019s emotions boiled over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He slapped Salmon in the face with referee Tyson Brough sending him to the sin bin for striking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It came six minutes after teammate Latu Fainu was sent to the bin for a dangerous tackle on Leo Thompson, meaning the Wests Tigers were down to 11 men for four minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a bit of push-and-shove and I might have got under his skin a bit,\u201d Salmon said post-match in the winning sheds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never really thought about throwing a punch\u2026 I\u2019m not much of a fighter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Bulldogs v Wests Tigers – Round 20, 2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was probably frustrating looking up at the scoreboard, tensions were high.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t hurt that much… there\u2019s a bit of theatrics in it but what happens on the field stays on the field. \u2018Twalie\u2019 is a good fella.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a spur of the moment thing \u2013 I did shake hands in the end.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That had to be with his left hand because Salmon had surgery on his right hand five days ago to try to fix a tendon in one of his fingers, which he had tightly strapped together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has been needling the finger with local anaesthetic for the past two matches just to play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Twal comes back for an eventful play<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the type of toughness the Bulldogs players need to find again across the board if they are to stay in the hunt for a top-eight spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Salmon said the 32-0 result \u2013 Canterbury\u2019s first whitewash since the exact same scoreline against South Sydney in April last year \u2013 was just the springboard the club needed to take on the Warriors in Round 21.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs are 10th, one win outside the eight, while the Warriors are sitting pretty in second spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNext week will be the gauge for us because the Warriors are red-hot and playing really good footy,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to put our best foot forward if we want to beat them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have wanted to get back to our identity and I think we did that tonight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n Jaeman Salmon and Alex Twal come together at Accor Stadium.
\n \u00a9Anthony Kourembanas
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\u201cIf we can put a few more performances like that together we\u2019ll give the finals a good shot. But we have to get back to our 2025 selves and that was a really good step.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve won five from our last seven and I know some haven\u2019t been pretty but it\u2019s do-or-die for us now if we want to have a shot at finals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bulldogs back-rower Jaeman Salmon said he shook hands with Wests Tigers lock Alex Twal after full-time following a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-809246","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\/809246","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=809246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}