“We had to dig in to get that one,” Blues captain-coach Lachie Cameron remarked.

The win was extra sweet after the Bulldogs had knocked them out in the same game last year.

The Blues scored first through half-back Kialu Brown, but then fell behind 18-6 before, after a tighthead, hooker Jacob Nichols scooted out of dummy half with a couple of minutes to go in the first half, to close the gap to 18-12. 

They were then first to score after half-time and seemed to wrest the momentum, but “another pretty ordinary defensive effort", as Cameron put it, saw things even up again.

“(But) We finished the game really strong,” Cameron said.

Their first half was a bit scratchy.

“We made a few mistakes and our discipline was pretty ordinary too. We gave away a lot of silly penalties late in the count too,” he said.

“We probably didn't aim up in defence either.

“It was the old thing of defending well for three or four tackles and then slackening off.”

They muscled up better in defence in the second half. They also tightened up their marker defence with Hayne allowed to run a bit too much. And in attack they were patient.

“We didn't get frazzled when we were behind,” Cameron said.

“We spoke about being patient and maybe playing boring footy to wrest a bit of control back. We did that until we maintained a bit of control.”

Then they let the likes of Brown and Norman Lawler loose. The latter really added some spark coming on in the second half and finished with a double.

One for the unpredictable, Brown snapped a field goal with about 10 to go to put them five ahead. It, at the time seemed a bit of a strange option, but it kept their momentum and they ended up being the next to score.

Cameron said it was a whole team effort.

“Everyone did their job to get us the win,” he said.