Bathurst Bulldogs run out 40-12 winners over Forbes Platypi in Blowes Cup on back of four late tries

In one of the most bizarre endings to a game this season the Bulldogs ran out 40-12 winners over the Platypi at Ashwood Park, piling on four tries in the last seven minutes of the match.

The two clubs were locked at 12-all midway through the second half before consistent attacking pressure from the Bulldogs led to a yellow card being shown to Forbes' Dan Sweeney with 13 minutes to go.

From there the deadlock was broken in remarkable fashion.

Zach Taylor found space and dived over for a try to begin the late Bulldogs onslaught, and Adam Plummer followed up with a try to seal the result before the Platypi had regained a full contingent of 15 men on the field.

Brad Glasson still found time to land himself a double in the space of three minutes as Bulldogs scored quickly from the kick-off on back-to-back occasions.

Bulldogs managed to hold the Platypi to zero tries, with all their points coming from four Sweeney penalties.

It was a much improved second half performance from the Bulldogs, who had gone into the half-time break down 9-5.

Coach Dean Oxley said his Bulldogs did an excellent job to make the right adjustments at half-time to start accounting for the Platypi's pressure in the ruck.

"We've got a lot of belief in our ability. We made a decision at half-time to really try and control the ruck, because we were being beaten there. We focus so much on attack that sometimes we forget to clean up the ruck first before we go wide," he said.

"The tempo of our game was fast, and sometimes that led to errors, but that tempo can exhaust teams. I'm very confident in our boys' ability to play out a full 80 minutes and things clicked today on the back of that, scoring 40 points out of nowhere.

"We found against Cowra last week that we weren't combining but this week we were combining much better."

Bulldogs' late flourish of points became the perfect example of what Oxley's team can do when they get their way in the ruck.

"The yellow card comes from repeated infringements and the infringements come from the fact that if they don't slow our ruck down then we're going to score points," Oxley said.

"If they let us have the ball, we score. If they don't let us have the ball, they get penalised. That's good coaching from their behalf but in the end we took advantage of the refereeing that indicated that they couldn't keep doing what they were doing in the ruck.

"Forbes are a very strong club and they're the only side to beat Cowra this year so we were worried about this game today, and we only just snuck home when we played them up there. Our boys kept their cool, respected the referee and got the job done."

Platypi started the better side and found a pair of penalties inside the first 15 minutes of the match to lead 6-0.

Having been dominated in the ruck throughout the opening 35 minutes Bulldogs eventually found their way through when Bailey Warren pounced on a Forbes error and sent the ball out to the right wing, where Bryce Rue got his side back within a point.

Sweeney pushed the advantage back out to four with another penalty after the half-time siren, though the lead would only last five minutes into the new half.

Plummer found a gap through the middle of the park to score. Kurt Weekes' conversion made it 12-9.

Weekes almost extended that lead moments later but an excellent try saving tackle from John Monk prevented him from getting the ball grounded.

Forbes quickly brought the ball up the other end and capitalised on more poor Bulldogs discipline to hit home another penalty, levelling the scores with 23 minutes to go.

Then Sweeney's departure from the game ripped open the floodgates for the Bulldogs to put on their unexpected 28-point blitz.