Josh Hodgson’s warning after Raiders teammate Curtis Scott sacked

Curtis Scott’s sacking from the Canberra Raiders came as a shock but one of the club’s senior players has opened up on the move.

Curtis Scott had a tumultuous two seasons in Canberra.

Canberra Raiders star Josh Hodgson has called for care for Curtis Scott after the sacked centre shared his mental health struggles earlier in the week.

The Raiders terminated the 23-year-old’s contract on Monday, regarding an NRL breach notice in July after an alleged incident inside a Canberra nightclub in May.

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The Raiders pointed to his “prior behaviour and recent assault charge” as bringing the club into disrepute.

He was banned for three matches by the NRL at the time and was fined $15,000 for bringing the league into disrepute.

Scott was charged over the nightclub incident but said he would vigorously defend the charges.

Reports this weekend revealed Scott had attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and undergone psychiatric treatment as part of an attempt to save his career.

It is not the first time that Scott has run into trouble during his NRL career after an early 2020 incident where Scott was alleged to have assaulted two police officers when they found him passed out in Moore Park but the charges were dropped after reviewing the bodycam footage from the police officers involved.

Scott did plead guilty to two charges of offensive behaviour.

Curtis Scott’s contract has been terminated.

But on Monday night, The Daily Telegraph’s Phil Rothfield told Fox League’s NRL 360 on Monday Scott was involved in a fight with former teammate Luke Bateman during an incident at a team function last year.

The report indicates Scott injured his hand during the incident and was unavailable to be selected for a number of weeks. Police were never involved and the club chose to keep the fight a secret.

In an explosive social media post, Scott said the Raiders “have continued to kick me while I’m down and now leak in-house information that was dealt with over a year ago regarding a former player”.

“In my opinion it’s a low act and they have shown and proved that they have no real care factor for players’ welfare,” he said.

“It’s not the first time this has happened to a player at the Raiders that has come out about mental health struggles.”

Fronting the media via Zoom on Tuesday, Hodgson said the team was told in a meeting on Monday of the decision to terminate Scott and that he was "really disappointed”.

But not wanting to fan the flames of the story, Hodgson said he was “worried about Scotty”.

“Curtis is such a good kid,” he said.

“As can be the case in sport or in the world general when you don’t know somebody and you only see what you hear, you can kind of get a different picture.

“He’s a young man. I think sometimes we can forget he’s made some mistakes in his life as we all have but I’m the type of bloke that doesn’t spend so much time on people who don’t deserve it.

“I’m not going to put a lot of time and effort into someone if they’re not a good person and he’s certainly a really good person.”

Josh Hodgson has called for care for his young former teammate.

Hodgson also admitted that the players had touched base to make sure he was alright, but added it was difficult over the phone.

Hodgson also didn’t want to fan the flames over Scott’s explosive Instagram post but once again turned the attention to caring for his now former teammate.

“I’m sure he probably feels that way if that’s what he wrote because you’ve got to understand Scotty’s been on his own for a long time back in Canberra and Sydney and we’ve been up here (in Queensland) so he really feels isolated,” he said.

“I guess that’s why so many of us have been reaching out to him.

“I can’t comment for Curtis, all I can say is I’m sorry it’s a boring story and I can’t give you a headline but I’m just trying to make sure I look after my mate, as I’m sure we all are.

“There’s a lot of us here that care about Scotty and as I touched on earlier, if you want a good kid and a good person, we wouldn’t be doing as much as we can for him.

“First and foremost it’s just making sure he’s OK, especially as I touched on, reading that story the day before he got sacked.

“I think people need to tread very carefully before writing pieces on him until they actually know everything and know what he’s like as a bloke.

“If someone’s already put out there that they’re in that kind of head space, it’s a very delicate subject.”

Originally published as Josh Hodgson’s warning after Raiders teammate Curtis Scott sacked