He waited 56 minutes to get on. Then Galvin scored a try on his dream Bulldogs debut

Sydney Morning Herald

a day ago

It was a special moment in what is already shaping as a special career.
'We had a couple of plans, but that wasn't plan A,' Ciraldo said afterwards.
'We had a couple of different plans. It's been a really hard week for him to get his head around everything.
'On Tuesday, when I named the team, he wasn't in the team. I thought he'd play NSW Cup, and he'll just come through there and learn our systems.
'But every training session he did, he got better, he understood our systems better, and by the end of the week it became clear that we needed to have him in the team, and he could help us win the game.
'It's a credit to him and how he went about the week, and I thought he did great when he got on there.'
Ciraldo confirmed Galvin was 'predominantly a half' but could also potentially fill other roles, depending on the team's needs.
The win edged Canterbury (24 points) back ahead of Canberra and the Warriors (both 22 points) in the race for the minor premiership.
Galvin's brief but promising display at least partially solved the mystery of how Ciraldo plans to deploy him. The teenage prodigy wants to play halfback, and it appears that will be his long-term position.
The two sides were locked 12-all at half-time after posting two tries apiece in the opening 40 minutes.
The Bulldogs drew first blood in the eighth minute, when Parramatta halfback Ryley Smith passed from a scrum win and Matt Burton intercepted, before bolting 60 metres to score.
The boot was on the other foot four minutes later, when Burton tried to link with winger Marcelo Montoya, only for Parramatta flanker Zac Lomax to steal possession.
Lomax immediately passed to his NSW teammate Mitchell Moses, who outpaced the cover defence in a thrilling 75-metre sprint to the line.
Canterbury edged back ahead in the 20th minute, when they cleverly created an overlap with a blind-side raid the culminated in Montoya scoring.
Then came a costly error in judgement from Kikau, who clumsily clipped Moses in the 36th minute as he launched a bomb.
Moses crashed theatrically to the turf, and Kikau was dispatched to the sin-bin. Seconds later, Parramatta exploited a stretched defensive line when prop Junior Paulo off-loaded and utility Dylan Walker dived over between the posts.
The Bulldogs kept their line intact for the remaining nine minutes without Kikau, then regained the lead in the 49th minute when Moses tackled Kurt Mann high, and Canterbury skipper Stephen Crichton kicked a penalty goal.
That was all the encouragement the Bulldogs needed and they finished too strongly for Parramatta, as evidenced by their three tries in the final 20 minutes.
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Adding to Parramatta's woes, Moses was placed on report late in the game for a high tackle. He will be hoping that does not impact on his hopes of playing in Origin II next week.
Eels coach Jason Ryles was satisfied with his team's effort but said they were made to pay for their errors.
'We just gave them leg-ups,' he said. 'We made five yardage errors. They had zero. They completed at 90 per cent and had 60 per cent of possession.
'They're a disciplined footy team, and we gave them what they were after … again, another good lesson for us.'