Horrific injury during playing days helped launch Cameron Ciraldo’s coaching career
CAMERON Ciraldo has never wanted to see the YouTube clip that sent him viral. And why would he? Especially when his right leg still carries the scarring that comes with being broken in four places. WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES.
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CAMERON Ciraldo has never wanted to see the YouTube clip that sent him viral. And why would he?
Especially when his right leg still carries not only a steel plate, but all the scarring that comes with being broken in four places.
On cold mornings, the limb aches.
“Same as when I have a couple of beers,” he shrugs.
So chase down video replays?
WARNING: GRAPHIC INJURIES BELOW
No, Ciraldo has no problem recalling that Monday Night Football game in 2009 when, sprawled out on Shark Park, this then battling Newcastle backrower grabbed frantically at a busted leg.
That, and an ankle dislocated so badly that his right foot hadn’t simply flipped backwards, but flopped — completely lifeless.
Yet even more horrific, Ciraldo reckons, were those faces looking down at him.
Like Blake Ferguson, the Cronulla teenager he’d been trying to tackle. And Mark Taufua, the fellow Knight with whom his leg so awkwardly entangled.
Yet as for the most vivid memory?
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“Ben Pomeroy,” Ciraldo says, recalling the Sharks No.3. “He was standing over me with this look on his face … like he was about to start screaming.”
Not that Pomeroy did. Nor anyone else. But, geez, how quickly everyone spun away, shielded eyes, even dry-retched.
“So I knew,” Ciraldo says, “things had gone bad.”
And yet they hadn’t. Not really.
For, yes, this 24-year-old had just suffered an injury so horrific, so grotesque, his ankle alone would take 15 minutes to reset in the sheds.
The first grinding, crunching steps on a journey that, through nine months, and with surgeons saying he was done, would see this little-known backrower push through a swirl of painkillers, crutches, ice packs, hand grinders, even what Knights rehab boss Adrian Brough recalls as “incredibly dark places”.
“And without all of that,” Ciraldo shrugs, “I wouldn’t be here.”
And by here, he doesn’t just mean head coach of the Penrith Panthers.
Nor the most inexperienced clipboard carrier — at exactly five games — still alive in the NRL playoffs.
Indeed, right now, Ciraldo cannot say if he will coach on in 2019. Or even if he wants the life of a coach at all.
Just as this father-of-five still hasn’t moved into the office of old boss Anthony Griffin, six weeks after those last cardboard boxes were moved out.
“But I share a desk with other staffers,” he says. “And when you’re bouncing around ideas all day, I’ve got no reason to move.”
Again, because of that leg.
Chatting with League Central on the eve of Friday night’s blockbuster against Cronulla — the same rival, ironically, as that night his life changed forever — Ciraldo reveals how so much of what he does, and how much of who he is, goes back to that match at Shark Park.
Understanding, yes, he would eventually get back into first grade. Not only defying the doctors, but playing another four years.
Yet know too how in the weeks after his horrific break, while still hobbling about on crutches, this gritty forward was quietly approached by Knights coach Brian Smith and assistant Trent Robinson with an offer.
“They wanted me to do some little projects,” he recalls.
Projects? “Every week, I had to study the opposition’s forward pack,” Ciraldo explains. “Look up every player, do a preview, then present to the team.
“I’d never done anything like it.
“But really quickly, I learned to see rugby league from another perspective. Not only researching the opposition, but knowing what to look for and why.
“I’d do my stuff then show it to Trent, who provided feedback before my presentation to the group.”
And for an entire season, this continued. Ciraldo studying tape, seeking flaws and continually trading ideas with two of the modern game’s greatest minds.
“Brian even sent me to an away game,” he says. “Asked me to watch a team live, then report on it.
“Looking back, it really was the start of my coaching journey.”
Indeed, to truly understand Ciraldo the coach, you must first get to know him as the battling footballer who, through nine years and three clubs, averaged less than 10 appearances annually, never played finals footy and survived largely on contracts lasting 12 months.
You want to know why Ciraldo speaks so honestly with players? It’s because of all the times he sat on the other end of those same conversations.
Cameron, you’re dropped … Cameron, you’re cut … Cameron, you’ll never run on that leg again.
“So when players here at Penrith get injured, yeah, I know what they’re feeling,” he says. “The doubt, the anxiety, I can relate.
“And that’s why blokes like fullback Dylan Edwards, after doing his shoulder this year, I’ve given them projects, too. I do it because I know how much it helped me.”
And as for telling a player he’s dropped?
“Yeah, I’ve been told that plenty of times,” Ciraldo says. “Which doesn’t make the conversation easier. They’re never easy.
“But I do know how to have those conversations a lot better given I’ve been on the other end of them.”
All of which sounds like the makings of a career coach, right?
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“Ahhh … I honestly don’t know,” he insists. “As a player, my longest contract was two years. So you learned to enjoy the moment, never look too far ahead.
“And maybe that’s rubbing off now because I really don’t care what’s happening next year. I only care about Friday night.”
Again, because of that leg.
And an evening where, despite the ensuing years, Ciraldo can still see himself inside those Shark Park sheds — in pain and gripping the hand of close mate Adam Dykes, the retired Cronulla playmaker who had been watching from the grandstand.
“When I started out at the Sharks myself, Dyksey was like a big brother,” he says. “A groomsman at my wedding and still helps me out now.
“So he’d raced down to the sheds and, while we were waiting, stood beside me, holding me hand.
“Funny the things you remember.”
Isn’t it what?
Take Brough, the former Knights rehab guru who, now living in Spain — where his daughter chases a football career — recalls holding Ciraldo’s leg while a doctor attempted, several times, to reset the ankle.
“And that crunching sound,” he says, “I can still hear it.”
Just as Ferguson, now in his own premiership push with the Roosters, still remembers “looking back at that leg”. And Hilder, a Novocastrian plumber, will tell you how “what I saw … nah, it wasn’t good”.
Worse, nobody could source pain relief.
“No green whistle,” Ciraldo laughs. “These days, you cork a thigh and out comes the whistle.
“But that night, nobody could find one anywhere.”
Which goes some way to explaining why for nine years, Ciraldo had never sought that replay.
But then, in January this year, after a pre-season training session, one of the younger Panthers players looked it up on YouTube. Within minutes, he had himself a crowd.
“So that was the first time I watched it,” Ciraldo says, grinning. “First time I saw how it all occurred.
“And, no, it wasn’t something I wanted to relive.
“But, it happened. And happened for a reason.
“I mean, getting injured like I did … it’s really turned out to be a blessing.”
Originally published as Horrific injury during playing days helped launch Cameron Ciraldo’s coaching career
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