If Hayden and Dora kept their game plan pretty plain-vanilla on Thursday night, there were some pretty good reasons.

First, the affair was just a pre-season jamboree, the traditional glorified scrimmage to give their teams a shakedown before the real fun begins the following week.

Second, and more importantly, the jamboree was held at Corner High, which will play at Hayden next Thursday and at Dora in late September. And Corner’s entire staff and roster, including head coach Brent Smith, were intently watching their future opposition from the comfort of their own grandstands.

So with that in mind, it was little wonder that there were no crowd-pleasing, pull-out-all-the-stops plays in the Wildcats’ 7-0 decision over the Bulldogs.

“It was a little rough,” Hayden coach Steve Kerby said. “Because it was vanilla, that held us back. We’ve got some things we do really, really well that we don’t want anyone seeing yet.”

Especially their hosts, of course.

“Our defense was kinda salty. We held them to two goal-line stands. In the past we hadn’t been able to do that, to stop the big play once it broke. Tonight, we did, on both levels,” Kerby said.

Hayden’s only score came on a nine-yard touchdown pass from Corey Ward to Jared Hargett, scored with just 39.8 seconds left before halftime.

The touchdown came after the Cats recovered a fumble, one of three turnovers by the Bulldogs in the first-team part of the jamboree.

Dora had its chances, and appeared to have scored with about six minutes left in the first half, when defensive end Christian Hogg caught ball that was being juggled by a Hayden receiver. Hogg ran 65 yards for an apparent touchdown, but the play was called back on a downfield block-in-the-back penalty.

The Bulldogs then bogged down deep in Wildcat territory, one of three times that Hayden held Dora for no score inside the red zone. Two of those holds came with the ball inside ther 7-yard line.

“We’ve still got to shore up some things in our blocking schemes with our backs, and some stuff like that,” Kerby said. “The problem with that is we’re very thin back there. Gotta try to find some depth somewhere.”

Hayden opens at home against Corner on Thursday.