By David Beniuk
Even Canterbury coach Kevin Moore is using the try-scoring dual between the Morris twins as a motivator.
Bulldogs centre Josh Morris rocketed to the top of the NRL try-scorers' table on Sunday with four against a hapless Sydney Roosters outfit in Canterbury's crushing 60-14 win at ANZ Stadium.
The haul took Morris's tally to six for the season, one more than twin brother Brett who bagged two for St George Illawarra on Friday night, the Warriors' Manu Vatuvei and Roosters halfback Mitchell Pearce.
Moore said he'd thrown down the gauntlet to his classy centre at training on Saturday.
"I said, 'It looks like your brother put a bit of a challenge to you," Moore said.
"We had a bit of a laugh about that but he certainly responded, didn't he?"
Morris had a hat-trick by halftime as the Bulldogs blew the Roosters' bright start to the season out of the water, leading 30-4 by the break.
He added another when Roosters fullback Todd Carney, who had his first shocker for his new club, spilled a kick in the 61st minute and Morris was there to pounce.
"I was probably a bit lucky on a couple of them and I probably had some good karma today," Morris said.
The Morris twins, who both play on the left side of the field for their clubs, are now hoping to play alongside each other, literally, when State of Origin selection comes around after playing together in a Test against France last year.
"Certainly there is an opportunity there and being at different clubs we have spoken about the only time we will get to play together is in sides like that, but you have to be playing good football and your side has to be going well to be in the equation," Josh said.
"It is something that we have talked about and it would be great to represent our state or country again together.
"Brett's been playing awesome and obviously it's great to always get the better of him each week."
Moore said 23-year-old Morris was now a senior member of the Dogs side, which ended its 0-2 start to the season with their biggest ever win over the Roosters in front of 19,738 fans.
"He's one of our key players and I just thought he stood up at the start of the game," he said.
"You could see that he was really hungry for it."
The Bulldogs ran in a total of 12 tries and the Roosters' woeful performance, with a completion rate that only just cracked 50 per cent, even verged on the comical when interchange forward Martin Kennedy fell and head-butted a ball from the kick-off to gift Morris his third.
"It shows there's a fair bit of spirit in the side that we, under maybe a little bit of pressure from outside, I think we didn't lose any faith," Moore said.
The visitors mounted a brief comeback with two tries in the five minutes after halftime, to Braith Anasta and Mitchell Pearce.
It got the score back to 30-14 with halfback Pearce involved in both tries, but the visitors were outmuscled and out-enthused on another warm Sunday afternoon.