I attended the match and was pleasantly surprised at how good a night it was. There were heaps of people in Bulldogs gear and the guy taking tickets even commented about all of the Bulldogs fans coming out of the woodwork. People were allowed onto the field before the match, at half time and afterwards which created a party-like atmosphere and although I don't reckon a trial is worth $20 at least the food wasn't a rip-off. The game was fairly entertaining too, so it was worth the money and the local clubs share it which is good. I was glad that the crowd was over 8k but it seemed like a lot more with people packing into the smaller hill and grandstand areas. The thing that was lacking was crowd involvement. Even with a lot of Bulldogs supporters there wasn't a lot of cheering. One Canberra fan near me was cheering all match though.
As for the game itself, the Bulldogs played quite well for a trial. There weren't many errors and for the most part they played quality footy. Hodgson and Paea were impressive up front getting through a lot of work and running hard. Seeing Paea perform like a starter was encouraging and he came very close to scoring a try as well. The long kicking game of Noddy and Ennis was a highlight, as were the skills of those two with Noddy holding up a pass nicely to set up Hodgo for the first try and kicking for Nanai to jump high out wide and knock the ball down for Morris to score. Ennis chipped from dummy half about 8m out from the tryline and easily got to the ball first. His goal kicking was good too. His only miss was near touch on his non-preferred side after Barba went scheming and put Nanai over in the corner. I didn't even notice Roberts. I feared extending his contract was a bad idea. He just isn't effective enough often enough. In the occasional game he plays great but for mine, Barba offers more because he usually has a try assist or at least a line break in every match and that's with limited time.
I can't remember much else from the game tbh but I left feeling confident of another successful year because we really dominated the Raiders. They were never in the match and when they did threaten our line, our defence was strong, except for their first try.
It was good to see bobcat chaired off the ground too haha.