The Dragons were able to breeze past the Tigers on Sunday afternoon to the tune of 28-6, but it wasn’t without trouble as star fullback Josh Dugan was injured in the sixtieth minute.
Nightingale sings
The Dragons were out of the blocks early with a try to veteran winger Jason Nightingale off a Widdop kick and it only got better for the former Kiwi international. The Dragons were up by 14 when they went in to the sheds and twelve of those points came through Nightingale, who came very close to a fourth on half time. The strength of the Nightingale-Tim Lafai partnership, which did not really fire last year, bodes well for the Big Red V.
Tedesco Valiant in defeat
He ran for more than two hundred metres and had three tries denied by a staunch Red V D, and he couldn’t get his clunky team’s attack in order, but it was a sublime individual day for James Tedesco – though it is fair to say a win would have been preferred, the man in the number one had spiders on him all afternoon. David Nofoaluma also raised a bat for the double century of metres. The rest of the backline couldn’t click as well.
Dugan down
A reason for the resurgence of the Dragons so far this year has been the performance of their fullback in Josh Dugan, who played a lot of centre last year. Pulling lame in the sixtieth minute, injury for too long could force Mary McGregor to turn to Kurt Mann as custodian, who did a less than stellar job in the single digit last year. Josh Dugan is one of the best power runners in the comp and leaves a hole that’ll be hard to fill.
Hardest job in the world
The saying “well it’s not rocket science” could do well with being replaced by “well it’s not coaching Wests”, because that’s the new hardest job in the world. Andrew Webster took over for the recently sacked Jason Taylor and hasn’t done much wrong – his boys from Concord were on the wrong side of a clinical Melbourne shut out in the second half and came up against a much improved Big Red V on Sunday. They’ve come to a stage where they deserve at the very least some good luck. Next week they take a plane to Townsville to dance with the Cowboys. Some luck.
