West End Bulldogs defeated Goodna Eagles 26-18 in the Ipswich Rugby League Whitehead Studios Reserve Grade Cup on Saturday.
In the 7th minute of the match Goodna opened the scoring when Liva Toelupe got the ball and used a combination of footwork and power to charge over and score under the posts.
When West End kicked-off after Toelupe's try, Bulldogs' halfback Cameron Tolhurst took the ball from Goodna and scored to level the scores at 6-6.
When Goodna lost a player to the sin-bin in the 20th minute, West End gained momentum and Gary Natoealofa scored for the Bulldogs in the very next set to give West End a 10-6 lead.
A late first-half try to Bryson O'Sullivan gave the Bulldogs a 16-6 lead at the halftime break.
Four minutes into the second-half, Goodna halfback Jesse Bramwell put in a short grubber kick close to West End's try-line and scored from it to cut the margin to just four points.
West End struck back quickly though when William Sadler ran a near-perfect line to slice through and score to extend the Bulldogs' lead to 22-12.
With the last quarter of the game remaining West End were put under pressure on their own try-line by some enterprising Goodna attack, but the Bulldogs' defence held strong.
Just as it seemed Goodna might have too many errors in their game to crack West End's defence again, Toelupe barged over to score from dummy-half to get the Eagles back within four points at 22-18.
With three minutes remaining and leading by four, West End knew if they could score another try they would claim victory – a well-placed cross-field kick allowed them to do just that when Bryson O'Sullivan dived on the ball that had been batted back to him to score and give West End an eight point lead.
The Bulldogs missed an attempted penalty goal from 50 metres out after the fulltime siren but ran out winners 26-18.
