Campo’s Corner: Remembering young Josh Dugan, the prince of Canberra
As Josh Dugan’s career comes to a serious crossroads, Campo’s Corner looks back to when the mercurial fullback was Canberra’s pride and joy.
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As the Josh Dugan saga continues to be played out, it seems there is a real possibility this could be the end of the Cronulla man’s career, or at least the end of a major part of it.
If this is the end, it may be a fitting one. Things always seem to happen to Dugan – good things (he was once an automatic Origin and Test selection), bad things (getting on the cans midway through an Origin series), strange things (the Ray Lewis tattoo), whatever, if things could happen, they would happen to Dugan, and they would happen louder and faster than they did to everyone else. He’s just that sort of player.
So many of these things have happened to Dugan that he seems to have been around longer than his 29 years, but that’s how it goes when you start so fast, and Dugan’s start back in his Raiders days was as fast as it gets.
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There were great expectations for Dugan in Canberra, but not the kind of expectations that would come later when he was playing for New South Wales and Australia.
When Dugan was on the rise for Canberra’s Toyota Cup team in 2008, the club was undergoing a very messy split with Todd Carney, who was supposed to be the saviour but couldn’t keep things together for long enough to realise his considerable talents.
The Raiders were at a low ebb, and Terry Campese helped pull them out of it by spearheading a finals run that very season, but the future of the club was supposed to be that Toyota Cup side, who won the grand final in extra time, and the brightest part of that future was supposed to be Josh Dugan, who won man of the match and looked like the kind of player a fanbase and a club and a city could pin their dreams on.
Now Dugan is a very big man, but back then he was wiry, skinny almost, but he was so flexible and strong through the legs and hips he was able to slither and bounce out of tackles. Watching him move was like seeing a snake who had been taught how to run.
From the time he debuted in 2009, Dugan could always break tackles. If the first defender he met took him down it was a genuine shock. In that debut season he broke 104 tackles in 16 games — James Tedesco led the entire league in 2019 with 136 across 24 games.
In recent years, Dugan has developed an injury-prone reputation. Last season was just the second time in the past 10 seasons he played more than 20 matches in a season, and the arthritis in his knee might be what finally ends him early. Even in those Canberra days, he copped some criticism for seemingly picking up a little knock in just about every game he played.
But, almost always, he would get up and go again and he` was brave as well, sometimes to a fault. There was the time he charged headfirst into a rampaging Dave Taylor in a Round 26 game that really didn’t matter, and came off much worse for wear because headbutting a flying coal train will only end one way.
He would scream on to kicks with no regard for human life as the traffic sped both ways. He would throw himself under opposition players as they tried to reach out to score, no matter how pointless it seemed, or how certain they looked to score. And he would run and run and run again, without fail, and for all the times he would go down, most of the time he’d get up again.
Dugan went on to bigger things once he left Canberra, but for all the rep jerseys he ever got, he was never better than he was in 2010. That was the kind of season any fullback would have been proud to call their best.
He scored 13 tries, which remains a career high. He made 21 line breaks, which remains a career high. They say now that Dugan can’t pass, but he could back then, and he did – his 10 try assists and 10 line break assists remain career highs. He broke an astounding 170 tackles which not only remains a career high, but a total no player has surpassed since.
The Raiders roared to life late, as they did in those days, winning eight of their last nine to make the finals and knocking off second-placed Penrith in the opening week. Then they lost to the Tigers at home, and Campese did his knee for the first time and all the great things that were supposed to happen never really did. Still Dugan was the one who tried to get them home once Campese went off. He did all he could, and he looked like the future. He looked special. He was special. He was the future and the present. He was 20 years old.
Things were never that good for Dugan again, not at Canberra anyway. The next season injuries got him, and the season after that he played some good footy but it wasn’t the same. He was moved to five-eighth, and that went badly, and he spent time on the wing because Reece Robinson had to play fullback for a while, and I swear that’s not as crazy as it sounds now.
Then, after an insipid Canberra loss to Penrith to open the 2013 season, Dugan skipped training to drink with Blake Ferguson on the roof of their house. Players have survived worse, but by that point Dugan had accumulated enough little things that it had become a big thing. In that loss, Panthers players targeted Dugan. They beat him out of the game, and they told him he was soft.
Dugan left Canberra, and as good as he was there weren’t many who were sad to see him go. It was the right time for a split, for player and club. Dugan had run his course and those little things had added up.
From there, everything else happened to Dugan. He went to Saints and played Origin again, and he played for Australia and he moved to the centres, even though fullback was always his true home, and he became one of the game’s biggest stars and packed on the muscle until the lithe snake in the headgear was just a memory and he didn’t slither when he ran anymore, he stomped.
Then he signed with Cronulla but he’s yet to really get going as a Shark and he’s been kicked out to the wing a few times, and now it looks like it might all be over.
It would be a sad end, because it’s always sad when a player cannot retire on their own terms. The Sharks seem to think Dugan flat out doesn’t want to play footy anymore, and there are reports his own camp explored the possibility of medical retirement.
It’s a long way from those old days, when he was the prince of the city with the future of a club on his back and in his hands.
They were good days, for Dugan and the Raiders, but they were a long time ago now and things can’t ever be the way they used to be.