Canterbury centre Josh Morris has not played his last game as a Bulldog despite suffering a serious knee injury in their 22-16 loss to the Sharks on Sunday.
Bulldogs officials were optimistic that Morris has not injured his ACL, but the veteran is still facing the prospect of missing matches.
The sight of Morris - who is off-contract at season's end - signing autographs, albeit in a knee brace, after the match was another positive sign.
Bulldogs coach Dean Pay was unable to confirm the extent of the injury but said Morris is due to have scans on Monday.
"I'm not sure [if Josh ruptured his ACL]. I can't tell you that, I don't know," Pay said.
"He said he wasn't confident in going back out there, so we made a call then. He will have to go for a scan and we'll find out more from there."
It was in the 25th minute when Sharks centre Jesse Ramien landed on Morris' left knee in a tackle but the outside back refused to leave the match until halftime.
Match highlights: Sharks v Bulldogs - Round 11, 2018
It was a similar show of courage to the 2014 State of Origin series opener when Morris was told he had damaged his ACL by medical staff but still got up and put his body on the line to stop a flying Greg Inglis.
Pay praised Morris' courage.
"He's a tough kid," Pay said. "He just wanted to stay out there to get through to halftime then assess it."
With the Bulldogs sitting on three wins from 11 matches, a frustrated Pay says it's time for the team to start taking some responsibility for their patchy display of football.
"We need to take some ownership on how the games are going," Pay said.
"We just can't seem to put sustained periods of footy together with what we are doing and that's the biggest problem we've got.
"Bottom line is, we need to be better. We can't start halves with a 5-0 penalty count. We just can't keep doing that and expect to win footy games."