The pressure valve has been well and truly released on Canterbury coach Cameron Ciraldo after his side thumped a hapless Gold Coast 32-0 at Belmore.
With two losses to open the NRL season after some heavy recruitment, questions were being asked of second-year coach Ciraldo, who had come out of the highly rated Penrith system.
But he was confident his troops weren't far away from a breakthrough win, and they proved him right in their Saturday afternoon match, smashing the Titans in a six-try-to-nil romp.
"It's easy after a couple of losses to change things around and stop believing in what you're doing," Ciraldo said.
"But I feel like everyone in the building kept believing in what we were doing and stuck to it, and today we got the result.
"I thought we were going to have a good performance, but it's good to get a scoreline like that."
While they have been carrying injuries, it's been a nightmare start for new Gold Coast coach Des Hasler, with his team only scoring four points in their two games either side of the bye.
His men had a chance to make an early statement, but AJ Brimson ignored clear passage to the line and instead passed to Kieran Foran, who dropped the ball cold.
It was the last time the Titans really threatened the line, with the Bulldogs dominant in every department, leaving Hasler looking shell-shocked in a return to Belmore for the former Canterbury coach.
They shared the spoils among six different try-scorers, with Jacob Preston opening their account in the 17th minute off a short ball from Drew Hutchison.
His second-row partner Viliame Kikau, who battled injury last season after joining from the Panthers, was in a damaging mood and came up with their second try in the 29th minute after charging down a Tanah Boyd kick.
Gold Coast only trailed by 12 at halftime, but that blew out in quick fashion, with Bulldogs hooker Reed Mahoney burrowing over.
The Canterbury faithful were in full voice at their spiritual home as Jacob Kiraz kept the scoreboard ticking over, then Connor Tracey finished off some interplay by ex-Panthers trio Kikau, Stephen Crichton and Matt Burton.
Two minutes later Blake Taaffe added their sixth and final four-pointer in the 62nd minute.
At the same time, Titans captain Tino Fa’asuamaleaui limped off with a suspected knee injury to complete a miserable afternoon for the Gold Coasters.
Hasler wasn't sure of the severity of the star foward's injury.
"It's definitely his knee and that can range anywhere between MCL and ACL, so once we get some scans we'll know more, but it didn't look good walking off," Hasler said.
The coach felt their first half was "admirable" in defence, but lamented their bumbling attack.
"We held them to 12-0 with one (try) off a charge-down, so we went into halftime with a little bit of confidence given there might have been a few points in the second half with the breeze, but it didn't turn out that way,'' Hasler said.
"There are fundamentals that we just didn't apply today."
