Steelers shutout North Bay

The Sault Steelers needed only one play to walk away from North Bay with a victory on Saturday night.

Quarterback Travis McLean hooked up with receiver Tim Higgins for an 80 yard pass late in the fourth quarter to set up Toby Traveson's touchdown run to lift the Steelers to a 7-0 win and improve their Northern Football Conference record to 2-1.

Both teams suffered from a lack of discipline in the sloppy, penalty filled game.

"Most of the credit I have to give to my lineman, to see where I was, all I did was let it go, I can't out throw that guy he's too fast and he's my go to guy," McLean, who completed seven passes for 124 yards, said after the game.

"They figured they would take a shot at it and the corner stumbled, didn't turn the right way and stumbled and that's a breakdown and the guy caught him right over top it was a good ball, a well thrown ball," admits a frustrated Bulldogs head coach Marc Mathon as his club falls to 1-2 on the season.

The Bulldogs thought they had scored the first touchdown of the game late in the second quarter, when a Travis McLean pass was tipped and fell right into the hands of Steve Fleming who returned it over 50 yards for what appeared to be a touchdown.

However, the touchdown was called back after a flag was thrown 40 yards behind the play. That was one of many calls against the Bulldogs that drove the coaching staff nuts on this night.

"We've got to make some changes there's obviously something we've got to do," Mathon said.

"I'm sure we got 130 – 140 yards in penalties and every 75 yards in penalties is a touchdown, a touchdown was called back by a penalty, I really think a lot had to do with breakdowns at the wrong time, taking penalties and more importantly we've got some good offensive lineman that are injured and that hurt us, we weren't able to do what we wanted to do on offence, we've got to move the ball down field and we absolutely have to score some points."

The Bulldogs also missed three field goals on the night, the first one blocked on the first drive of the first quarter, second attempt in the 2nd quarter was botched by a bad snap and no kick was even attempted, and the third was about a 40 yard attempt by Ricky Thompson in the fourth quarter that went wide left.

The Steelers return to action on Saturday at Rocky DiPietro Field against the Toronto Maddogs at 7 p.m.

(With files from BayToday.ca's Chris Dawson)