Des Hasler under more pressure as dreadful Bulldogs dominated in 20-4 loss to Eels
HOW in the world does Des Hasler survive after what the Bulldogs dished up against the Eels? Dreadful. Disorganised. Dysfunctional.
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MATCH REPORT: Eels breeze past dreadful Dogs
THE Canterbury board better have a Plan B ready because this is about to get very ugly.
Outside the Bulldogs’ dressing rooms on Thursday night chairman Ray Dib was putting on a brave face amid the gloom that followed his team’s ninth loss in their last 11 games.
But it was the visibly distressed face of Des Hasler at the post-match media conference that told the real story.
Hasler labelled the 20-4 loss to Parramatta “unbelievably undisciplined”.
And that was putting it kindly.
You could throw in dreadful, disorganised and diabolical.
And you still might fall well short of what Bulldogs’ fans will wake up saying today.
Looking at this team on paper, you can only wonder how in the world they are coming up with the type of football they dished up again on Thursday night.
Hasler did his best to sum it, particularly the error-riddled first half that saw them trail 16-0 in the wet.
“You don’t have to be a football whiz to work out that we made it pretty easy for them,” Hasler said.
“For those conditions we were sort of unbelievably undisciplined.”
It wasn’t as if the Bulldogs’ didn’t have a go in defence.
It’s just that once again their attack looked totally lost.
In Channel Nine commentary Andrew Johns lamented: “There is no science to the way they are playing.”
Johns later added: “The worrying thing for the Bulldogs is that if it was dry tonight the scoreboard could have been anything.”
Parramatta’s Daniel Alvaro opened the scoring in just the 11th minute when he bulldozed straight through the Bulldogs’ entire front-row of James Graham, Moses Mbye and Aiden Tolman like he was a world-beater, not a little-known bench forward.
And five minutes later poor Josh Morris dropped the ball on the first tackle from a penalty with a kind of moment that pretty much summed up the Bulldogs’ season.
Asked if the speculation surrounding his own shaky future was putting pressure on his players, Hasler responded: “No, I don’t think so.
“I don’t think they’d cop that excuse.”
And while skipper James Graham backed his coach on that point, he admitted confidence was an issue.
“It is never good when you are losing games,” Graham said.
“It does knock you around a bit in terms of your confidence and ability as a group.
“I don’t know if it a combination of things or whether it is just down to confidence, I honestly don’t know.”
While the Canterbury board were accused of rushing into handing Hasler his new deal earlier in the season, the pressure on them is also going to be magnified from here.
All the talk going into Thursday night’s game was that Hasler’s future could still hinge on how the Bulldogs perform over the closing five rounds of the regular season.
If this was the start of the test, then it doesn’t look promising.
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