Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo admits he was "filthy" with his team's first-half performance against the Broncos as they recorded their first defeat of the 2025 season.
Canterbury conceded 34 consecutive points to Brisbane in the opening period on Thursday night.
Despite this, he was "proud" of their second-half effort, as they scored three tries to bring the scoreboard to 42-18 by full-time.
"We were certainly humbled in that first half," Ciraldo said in his post-match press conference.
MORE: Trade smarter with eToro, the world's leading social investing platform
"We received a lot of praise in the first six weeks and probably rightly so at times, but that first half wasn’t good enough.
"The Broncos came here with a lot of desperation and were very good, so credit to them.
"I thought we had a lot of guys working hard, but we had a couple of guys that were off.
"It was a comedy of errors, but we’ll walk away with plenty of lessons tonight.
"Number one: we're not good enough to be beaten by the laws of the game like that. Number two: we're not good enough to play as individuals. And number three: we never give up.
"I’m really proud of the second half but I’m filthy at the first half."
MORE: Women's Origin – QLD and NSW name Game 1 squad
The Bulldogs had three players sin-binned throughout the game for a trio of separate incidents, meaning they played 30 full minutes with 12 men on the field.
Ciraldo didn't have a view on whether they were fair punishments, but declared they came as a result of the Dogs "trying too hard".
"I don’t know [if the sin bins were fair]. There was so much going on tonight," he said.
"There was no flow to the game, and it was one of those games that was probably hard to watch.
"Everything that could get penalised got penalised and everything got picked up. It was a ball-ache to watch for me, so I’m sure everyone else felt the same.
"I put that [the three sin bins] down to us trying too hard. We were trying so hard, and made a couple of high tackles on the back of that [slow start]. We’ve been pretty disciplined, so we’ll fix that pretty quickly."