Reformation and Rebuilding Years
The following few years saw mixed fortunes for the club on the field, with a sudden decline in 1968 and 1969 followed by a semi-final berth in 1970 (though they immediately bowed out of the semis losing 12-7 to St George) and a return to mid-table in 1971 and 1972. However, off the field the club was developing administrative strength that would restore it to the status of a "power" for the following thirty years.
Canterbury made the semis again in 1973, coming fifth in the first year the competition had a final five rather than four. Though they lost to Newtown, this heralded better times as the club made the semis every year for the rest of the decade, apart from 1977 when the team was heavily hit by injuries.
1974 proved more promising, as the club finished third on the ladder behind a runaway Roosters outfit coached by Jack Gibson, and Manly. They then defeated both clubs - Manly 20-14 and Easts 19-17 to be the first through to the Grand Final. However, missed opportunities in an initially tight game lead to a 19-4 defeat. This had been the first Premiership decider Canterbury had played in since 1947.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs
Famous quotes containing the words reformation, rebuilding and/or years:
“Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword; shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)