By Matt Buxton, NSWRL
Blacktown Workers Sea Eagles recorded their first win of the season with a crushing 32-12 victory over South Sydney at Lottoland today.
Lachlan Croker made a successful return to rugby league for the first time since suffering an ACL injury in Round 8 last year, but it was Kelepi Tanginoa (pictured below) who stole the show in Blacktown’s 32-12 convincing victory against South Sydney.
The Rabbitohs entered the game undefeated while Blacktown Workers had no wins on the board, but previous form went out the window at Lottoland as the Sea Eagles turned it on.
Croker started the game with confidence when he executed a perfect kick behind the Rabbitohs’ defenders for his winger Sam Smith to win the race and score the first try of the afternoon.
Jade Anderson constantly posed a threat at fullback for Blacktown and he popped up in the perfect time and place when Tanginoa got his arm free close to the line and threw and offload for the fullback to collect and stroll over.
Tanginoa was in on the action again when he threw a nice pass to put Dane Aukafolau into space, which then allowed him to give it to Abbas Miski who had plenty of work to do before scoring Blacktown’s third consecutive try.
The final 20 minutes of the first half was looking to be completely scoreless until Abbas Miski ran the length in the final minute against the run of play. The Rabbitohs found themselves in good field position and a long ball was floated out to Leigh Higgins’ wing and he attempted to put an attacking kick through, but the ball went straight into the hands of Miski who never looked like getting chased down.
Tanginoa deserved his name on the scoresheet and he opened the second half with a strong effort when he ran onto a beautiful Zach Dockar-Clay pass and powered through the Rabbitohs’ defenders to make the score 26-0.
Andy Saunders powered through from short range shortly afterwards, before Souths finally broke the duck when Connor Tracey burst into a hole off a nice Keaon Koloamatangi pass close to the line.
Souths went back-to-back with a perfectly executed scrum play that was finished off by Dylan O’Connor, which was the final scoring play of the match.
