Big question in the Bulldogs saga: “The fine line between punishment and humiliation”
With the Bulldogs scandal taking center stage during the last week of the NRL regular season, premiership winner Matthew Johns has shared some terrifying tales of his training punishment.
When a player was disciplined for being late to practice, reports of his leaving the club sparked a debate about the use of penalties in rugby league.
Join Kayo Sports now to start streaming immediately and watch every game of the 2023 NRL Telstra Finals Series live and ad-free during play. Speaking on his SEN show Morning Glory with Matty Johns on Friday morning, Johns was joined by Sydney Morning Herald reporter Andrew Webster and Bloke in a Bar’s Denan Kemp to discuss the issue.
The player in question is said to have wrestled 20 of his teammates over the course of four minutes, or three and a half minutes, as Webster stated on the show. However, even this account is disputed, as the player stated that the day’s schedule stated that strapping began at 8 a.m. and training started at 8.30 a.m., despite the fact that he didn’t require strapping and thought he was early for the session. Johns stated that it was difficult to sort through the actual events that actually occurred.
Regardless, the player was subjected to the punishment and was reportedly left exhausted afterwards.
But Webster said there was a big question the Bulldogs had yet to answer.
“If they knew that this player had a history of mental health issues and then still subjected him to that sort of punitive action for turning up late, I think there are some major questions for the Bulldogs to answer there,” Webster said.
He added that he’d inquired with the NRL about an investigation and that the league said it was waiting for the Bulldogs.
I’m sorry, if you’re going to tick the box of being mental health advocates, as the NRL does, they need to get their hands all over this,” Webster concluded.
Johns tiptoed into the subject, saying that some former players wade into the discussion without fully understanding or knowing the circumstances or what had occurred and stressed he was talking in generalisations.
“I’ll say this broad brush from my experience — there’s a very fine line between punishment and humiliation,” Johns said.
I’ve been back at clubs — and I know this is eons ago — but I’ve seen some of the stuff that players have had to do as so-called punishment.
“I remember saying to a coach one day ‘what are you doing here? Is this punishment or is this just trying to embarrass the bloke?’
“I’ve seen situations at a club where a player got so pushed to the brink by a trainer that he grabbed him by the throat.
An old teammate of mine shared a story about one day a trainer tried to get players to jump in the water and swim in the open ocean and a couple of players couldn’t swim and said ‘no, no, get in there’.
Once again, I’ll come back to I don’t know what’s happened in the Bulldogs situation. Some of the punishment, if you’re going to do a punishment, the player has to take something out of it. But I think sometimes getting a young player, for instance, and I’ve seen this happen, get on the rower and they row to the point they fall off the rower.
And some of the dialogue that happens around that, I think there has to be a balance.”
Webster said he’d asked questions of the club over whether it was divided but said that a senior player and his manager and a small group of other players are unhappy with the training methodology and techniques at the club.
He added: “I don’t think it’s as divided as it’s reported to be.”
There have been rumors that players bemoaned the lengthy 8 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. workdays in text conversations that were leaked to the media.
Ciraldo brought up the subject when he was questioned on Thursday.
We have one long day a week, and if you get the final massage, you’re probably leaving at 5:30 p.m., Ciraldo said. Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. “Where I was before, in Penrith, the days were longer.
Nobody has come to me and complained about long days, we‘ve got a Jersey Flegg (under 21s) group who do weights at 5am, work for 10 hours and come back and do field at 5.30pm.
“We‘ve got a leadership group that we meet with every week and you’d like to think if there was some unrest that those guys would have brought it up.”
Players like Reed Mahoney and Viliame Kikau have defended the club’s policies, despite anonymous accusations from players regarding the training incident.
According to Webster, part of the problem is that the Bulldogs are in the midst of a rebuild, and some are drawing comparisons between Ciraldo’s rookie campaign and that of Andrew Webster, the former assistant coach of the Panthers who is now the head coach of the Warriors and has led New Zealand to a top four finish.
Johns added that if there is a senior player who is disgruntled and agitating in the background, that’s the attitude “they’ve got to weed out”.
Former Bronco Denan Kemp said one of the issues may be about an inexperienced player not understanding the purpose of the punishment.
In the Bulldogs’ defence, if they can’t be defended, it’s very hard to judge what you can and can’t do off a young player coming through,” he said. “Sometimes the young player doesn’t realise what the punishment was for or maybe doesn’t realise that he is cutting corners.
“Me for example, I sooked heaps of times. I never left training or whatever but if there was a session that wasn’t on that came on, I definitely sooked and needed senior players to be like ‘pull your head in’.
I didn’t see the benefit of it until I got a little bit older. They’re just in a really hard spot.”
Kemp added that it pointed to a lack of senior leadership at the club after former captain Josh Jackson retired at the end of last year.
Johns took aim at the army camp culture which had sprung up in rugby league as teams sought to emulate the Melbourne Storm.
Johns said the Storm used it for players in their first year in the club as a “filter” to show the coaches certain things about the players.
But as other clubs have followed suit, it’s been a race to who can do the most difficult.
“The physical is one thing, I have no problem with the physical,” Johns said. “But it’s all the other stuff that comes with it.
Sometimes we went on army camps and they’re striving to humiliate and break you down. Hang on a second boys, we’re not going to war.”
Webster said he understood Willie Mason’s comments on his podcast during the week when he called the players complaining about the training schedule “soft as s**t”.
The Bulldogs have long been built on the Dogs of War attitude as Mason did in his day but Webster said “the club’s gone through so much change and young players are different”.
