James Graham doesn't know if it is just a coincidence, but it was the Wests Tigers who triggered a four-game losing streak that threatened to ruin Canterbury's season.
The two teams will again lock horns on Thursday, just a month after the Tigers thrashed the Bulldogs 46-18 at ANZ Stadium.
While the Tigers haven't managed to win a game since, the Bulldogs snapped a four-game losing run against the Eels on Friday.
However, Graham is unsure whether the loss to the Tigers was to blame for a horror month of football.
"Maybe it is a coincidence, I don't know, but that's sport sometimes," Graham said.
"Maybe at the time we felt we should have bounced back the week after but we didn't. It was very disappointing for us last time to concede the number of tries that we did. We'll be expecting a similar performance or the same level of performance from them this week.
"The way this competition is, and the spread of the talent pool and how close it is. I think it's all down to little things and we came off the back of two really good wins against two really good sides. We just caught the Tigers on a really good day and we came up against Penrith and North Queensland who are quality sides."
Bulldogs wrecking ball Tony Williams said the team just had enough of walking away empty handed.
"I think enough was enough," he said.
"We knew that the last four weeks weren't us. We knew we had to come out, or the season was on the line, but the boys got the result and that's all that matters."
The Bulldogs are still no guarantee to play finals football and must beat the Tigers on Thursday, given they take on competition heavyweights South Sydney before an away trip to the Gold Coast to round out the season.
Graham knows there's still plenty of room for improvement in his side, but says the close win against arch-rivals Parramatta has relieved some of the pressure.
"Each week we've wanted to get out of that loser's circle," he said.
"The Parramatta game is a bit of a weight off our shoulders. We just needed to get a win. On the back of that, I think the performance from us and the completion rate was as high as it has been all year for us. We talked about giving ourselves an opportunity to win the game and that's what we did. The last 10 minutes was pretty tough. They had some good opportunities to get over, but I thought we defended reasonably well."
The last time the Bulldogs met the Tigers, Mitchell Moses was the destroyer.
Graham believes the key to stopping the Tigers is strangling their strike players of opportunities to weave their magic.
"He was outstanding that game, wasn't he?" Graham said of Moses.
"I think the first set they had he made a full length of the field break pretty much. I think what we learnt, if you give them enough possession and don't look after the ball, they are going to punish you."
* The Bulldogs are backing the Herald's Boots For Kids Campaign. The Bulldogs will have collection bins positioned around ANZ Stadium during Thursday night’s game and at Belmore Sports Ground during the junior grand finals this Saturday. Tweet us your photo as you drop your boots off @SMHsport with the #bootsforkids hashtag and follow the campaign at smh.com.au/bootsforkids
