The Essential Coffee Burleigh Bears put the Ipswich Jets to the sword this afternoon, winning 44-0 at Pizzey Park in a one-sided affair.
The Bears ran in eight tries, including three to debutant Jake Carl, in what was head-and-shoulders their best performance of the season.
Ipswich were their own worst enemy for the entire afternoon. They attempted their trademark short restarts on 13 occasions and only recovered the ball once, which constantly handed the Bears field position.
Throw in a poor completion rate and the Jets gave themselves no chance, while the Bears took every opportunity presented to them and made their opposition pay.
“We’ve been trying hard all year; today Ipswich had one of those days where nothing really stuck for them and we had a bit of luck,” Bears coach Jim Lenihan said.
“I thought we went through their middle really well and got at some targets and because of that they fatigued early on in the second half.
“We were able to keep controlling the game from there and it gave us an opportunity to put some points on, which is nice. We haven’t had a lot of opportunities to put some points on this year.”
The addition of 2016 premiership winners Paterika Vaivai, Pat Politoni (who remained on the bench for the Titans and did not play in their win over the Tigers on Friday night) and Nathaniel Peteru who returned from Titans duties was telling, as was the return of co-captain Luke Page.
Burleigh’s forwards rumbled through the middle all day and gave plenty of room for halves Harry Siejka and Dallas Wells to create points.
Those points started flowing in the 11th minute after the Bears forced a goal-line dropout. Ipswich went for the short drop-out, which the Bears regathered and Dylan Kelly strolled through to open the scoring.
Kelly was involved again in the 17th minute as Siejka put up a cross-field bomb. Kelly lept above the pack and got the offload away to Jake Carl who scored his first Cup try.
It wouldn’t take long for Carl to grab his second, as just four minutes later he plucked an intercept and ran 80m to take the lead out to 14-0.
The points continued to flow in the 25th minute as the Bears went to a pet play, with Jamie Dowling combining with Kurtis Rowe out the back to set up Daniel Vidot in the corner to give the Bears a commanding 20-0 lead at halftime.
Ten minutes into the second half, the Jets fumbled a Politoni grubber and Siejka won the race to kill off any sniff of an Ipswich comeback.
From there, the Bears went on with the job. Wells put in a perfect kick for Carl’s third try in the 58th minute, and Vidot crashed over in the corner for his second shortly after.
Christopher Law strolled through in the 77th to take the Bears past 40 to cap a tremendous win.
The win was a good reward for Bears interchange forward Darren Griffiths, who was playing his 100th game for the club.
See the full scoring details and final team line-ups for this game via QRL Live
BURLEIGH BEARS 44 (Jake Carl 3, Daniel Vidot 2, Dylan Kelly, Harrison Siejka, Christopher Law tries; Connor Broadhurst 6 goals) def IPSWICH JETS 0 at Pizzey Park.
