West End Bulldogs brought their impressive round one form into round two with a 48-nil win over Fassifern Bombers.
The Bulldogs and Bombers kicked-off the second round of the Ipswich Rugby League Mayor Paul Pisasale A-Grade Cup at West End's home ground, Daniel's Park.
From the early exchanges West End's forwards quickly laid a strong platform and fittingly it was West End's forwards who got the scoring underway when Matthew Ngature and Nephi Tusa gave the Bulldogs a 12-nil lead after just 12-minutes of play.
After conceding two early tries Fassifern got a lot of ball in attacking position but West End's defence was solid, turning the Bombers away on multiple occasions and forcing dropped ball with their physical defence.
West End five-eighth Shane Gibson was particularly outstanding in defence, seemingly coming up with big hits and textbook tackles every time the Bulldogs had to defend.
The Bulldogs' resilient defence was rewarded late in the first half, after turning away Fassifern several times West End got the ball in attacking position and Errol Palmer sliced through to score and give the Bulldogs an 18-nil halftime lead.
Both teams looked to have scored early in the second-half but on both occasions the referee ruled knock-ons just before the ball was grounded.
In the 57th minute however, there were no errors when the Bulldogs left wing and centre pairing Samson Hookey and Brook Alofipo combined for a scintillating try.
In a play starting 60-metres from the try-line Hookey ran down the sideline on a short-side play before hitting the defence and offloading to Alofipo who stepped weaved and sliced his way through the Bombers defence before coming into contact with the Fassifern defenders and offloading back to Hookey who sprinted away to score a try-of-the-year contender.
Leading 22-nil the Bulldogs were in control of the match and they began to run away with it even more from that point on.
After Shane Gibson scored to extend West End's lead to 26-nil, Nephi Tusa went on a 40-metre charging run, running over Fassifern defenders to score again and give the Bulldogs a 32-nil lead.
West End showed in the remaining 15-minutes that they are dangerous in attack from anywhere on the field with Errol Palmer scoring from a long-range team play, Nephi Tusa crashing over and scoring from short-range and Fa'aaliga Salavia scoring from a close-range short-side play to give the Bulldogs a 48-nil win over the Bombers.
In the other Ipswich Rugby League Mayor Paul Pisasale A-Grade Cup round two matches, Swifts defeated Brothers 30-24 and Goodna defeated Norths 18-12.
