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Dallin Watene-Zelezniak, according to Ivan Cleary, is not a first grader.

Which is why he was playing in the Canterbury Cup before he shifted to Canterbury. When you’re captaining your country, there isn’t a greater fall. So you can only imagine how satisfying this was for the man dubbed ‘DWZ’ on Saturday night.

The Bulldogs celebrated one of the updates of the season. Credit:AAP

On several occasions during Canterbury’s first home game at Bankwest Stadium, their mid-season recruit showed his class. There was the try he set up, just as telling as the one he stopped. It was plays like this that made perhaps the biggest upset of the season possible.

Of course, it couldn’t have happened without a contentious refereeing decision. Just days after Ivan Cleary was cleared of giving the whistleblowers a piece of his mind in the tunnel, the Panthers coach again had to bite his tongue. A solo try to Bulldogs half Jack Cogger was given the green light despite suggestions of a slight bobble in the put-down.