NRL 2020: Bulldogs stalwart Garry Carden leaves Canterbury after 37 years
Garry Carden has seen it all in 37 years as Canterbury’s conditioner. And as he prepares to leave Belmore for the final time, he’s opened up on the club’s greatest players and trainers.
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If it’s the people who make footy clubs, Canterbury will never be the same.
After 37 years at the Bulldogs, trainer and conditioner Garry Carden, has been let go.
He was told last Monday that his days as the club’s longest-serving staff member were over.
It’s this world we’re in right now.
You can’t find the words experience, sentiment or heartbeat in an annual report.
Almost four decades of history has walked out of Belmore for the final time.
The Belmore gym he personally built in 1991 – after piling weight plates and benches from his own garage into a truck – will never sound the same.
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Carden has too much respect to say a bad word about the club that gave him so much.
“It is unfortunately the end of an era,” Carden says.
“I’m alright, it was tough last week. You’ve got to cop what you cop sometimes.’’
Instead, we spoke last Thursday for more than an hour, about the coaches, the players, the people and the highs and the lows.
It was a lesson in Canterbury history.
After getting over his headache from the farewell party organised by old Bulldog Barry Ward at the Croydon Park Hotel last Friday, Carden should start his own podcast.
The stories are too good to be true.
Consider every coach and player that has walked through the Belmore gates over the past 37 years and Carden has either worked under them or trained them.
Coaches Warren Ryan, Phil Gould, Steve Folkes and Chris Anderson. Players like Terry Lamb, Steve Mortimer, Peter Kelly, Paul Langmack, Johnathan Thurston, Sonny Bill Williams and Josh Jackson.
And Carden, who first started at Canterbury in the summer of 1983 for nothing, takes away memories of them all.
“Some of the best times of my life have been at the Dogs,” he says, fighting back tears.
“I started in third grade and then I got about three games into the 1984 season with them when Warren Ryan came up to me and said he wanted me to be his runner in first grade.
“I was lucky enough to win the comp that year, again in 1985 and in 1986, we made the grand final.
“Then we got into the good stuff in the ‘90s.’’
Carden, 66, is the self-confessed ‘idiot’ you still see in replays and on YouTube, throwing himself all over Daryl Halligan, after the sharpshooter slotted his incredible sideline conversion during extra-time in the 1998 semi-final against Parramatta.
“I still say to this day, that’s the greatest semi-final series I’ve ever been involved with,’’ he says.
Reflecting on the hundreds of players he made run, lift and sweat, he says Williams and Thurston were a cut above.
And on a rowing machine ‘JT’ always had a rubbish bin close by.
“I’ve been lucky enough to train the two best players that have played for Canterbury in the modern era in Sonny Bill Williams and Johnathan Thurston,’’ Carden said.
“Sonny is the best athlete I’ve ever trained.
“He was just a big, tall, skinny kid when he arrived (in 2002).
“But he used to do a lot of things that other kids never did. He was always doing stuff on a balance beam and the rest is history of course.
“People see Sonny’s work-ethic now, but we give them that work ethic when they come to the Dogs.
“Thurston was the best trainer I’ve ever had, but he was terribly weak.
“He wasn’t strong at all and he took a few years of weight training to get the strength he needed.
“He was tiny (in 2001).
“I used to make him do a lot of rowing and he would automatically go and get a garbage bin, just so he could spew halfway through it.”
According to Carden, former prop-forward Peter Kelly was fearless.
He remembers when the game’s next big-thing, Ian Roberts, arrived at Belmore to play for South Sydney on a Sunday afternoon.
Roberts left the field on a stretcher.
“It was just Kel being Kel – he always liked a grudge match back in the ‘80s,’’ Carden said.
“But as for the toughest player, I’ve got to take my hat off to Dale Finucane.
“It broke my heart when Des (Hasler) let him go to Melbourne because he was what Canterbury was all about.
“He would train so hard and that’s exactly what we were made of.’’
Robert Relf, the hard-nut hooker who came down to Canterbury from Gloucester in 1991, is on the podium as one of Carden’s favourite larrikins.
“He was one of those blokes that could go out on a Friday night on the drink until 3am,” Carden said.
“If you had a training session on a Saturday morning, he’d rock up and be your best trainer.’’
The best coach?
“Warren Ryan was exceptional. Not everyone liked Warren, but I liked him,” Carden said.
“He only gave most blokes one chance. If they mucked up, they weren’t there long.’’
“But Folkesy (Folkes) was the best club coach I’ve ever worked with. He wasn’t a first-grade coach, he was a club coach.
“He took an interest from under-20s right through to first grade.
“He cared about everybody.”
In the eyes of Carden, Bulldogs legend Terry Lamb is much more than just one of the club’s true champions.
“Baa came in 1984 and is one of the greatest blokes to be part of our game,’’ Carden said.
“The great thing about Baa is he never got carried away with who he is.
“Some blokes walk around with their head stuck up their arse, as you know. But he’s just a great fella and we had a lot of good times.’’
Carden rates Folkes’ premiership win in 2004 as his all-time greatest moment because it was a triumph that optimized the club’s entire ethos at the time.
“That 2004 side, there were 13 players who had started in 1999 together, and that’s what Canterbury did well – they produced their own,’’ he said.
Of course, the highs never last long in rugby league and Carden has worn all of the shattering lows that have at-times all too frequently engulfed Canterbury.
“The salary cap scandal at the end of 2002, I‘ll never forget that day,’’ Carden said.
“We all got called into the kitchen at Belmore to be told we’d been stripped of our points and we were out of the semi finals.
“That was probably the lowest point I’ve been involved in.
“The Coffs Harbour scandal was a sad state of affairs and also Garry Hughes’ sacking (in 2004) ... he didn’t deserve to be sacked.
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“I’ll say this, they’ve really struggled to find someone to fit the bill for him, since he got sacked.
“They’ve had plenty of GMs of football, but he’s the best I’ve been under.’’
Carden, a life member of Canterbury, has walked out of Belmore for the last time after 37 years.
But judging by the scores of messages he’s received over the past week, his fingerprints on the club’s greatest players will always remain.
“A lot of good people came through that joint and it was a pleasure to train the lot of them,” he said.
Originally published as NRL 2020: Bulldogs stalwart Garry Carden leaves Canterbury after 37 years