Jamarra Ugle-Hagan’s return to the Western Bulldogs: When does he play, does he request a trade?

Jamarra Ugle-Hagan in back in the corridors at Whitten Oval – but plenty of work has to be done to rebuild trust. Scott Gullan reveals what happened in Jamarra’s first week back.

They’re the same three words which are providing the platform for Jamarra Ugle-Hagan’s unlikely football resurrection.

It’s not just one Western Bulldogs official or one of his close friends saying it, there are multiple people who have spent time with the troubled forward over the past two weeks and come up with the same conclusion: “He seems different.”

That observation has been the cornerstone of Ugle-Hagan’s return to the Dogs’ fold last week when he trained for the first time at the Whitten Oval since he took a leave of absence from the club in April.

While it’s a critical first step, it’s one of many he will need to deliver on if he is to ever pull on a Bulldogs jumper again.

Jamara Ugle-Hagan returned to the Western Bulldogs last week. Picture: NewsWire / Diego Fedele.

“He seems different, he sounds different and even looks different. He looks healthy,” was how one Bulldogs insider described Ugle-Hagan this week.

They’d effectively wiped their hands of him after a tumultuous off-season which followed alarmingly erratic behaviour that impacted the team’s performance in last year’s elimination final loss to Hawthorn.

Ugle-Hagan needed to change the narrative and spending 40 days in an intensive holistic wellness retreat in NSW at least did that. For the first time he was doing something – rather than hiding behind excuses – to address his issues.

To keep fit he hired a personal trainer while he was at the health retreat and clearly thrived from the experience. He returned to Melbourne with an “appetite” to play football again.

But first he had to convince key stakeholders at the Bulldogs that he was serious about his comeback and understood the requirements involved.

At the top of the list was coach Luke Beveridge and the pair met for an hour at a Bayside cafe where Ugle-Hagan convinced the coach he’d changed and was aware of his responsibilities.

A meeting at Bulldogs chief executive Ameet Baines’ house was next where football boss Sam Power was in attendance before the hardest of the lot, a face-to-face with his teammates.

First was a quiet chat with captain Marcus Bontempelli and Tom Liberatore followed by a reconnect with Aaron Naughton, his forward line partner who had been one of his closest allies since the 2020 No. 1 draft pick arrived at the club.

Then Ugle-Hagan spoke to the entire playing group, apologising for his actions and essentially asking for forgiveness before a light session last Monday.

Ugle—Hagan met with both Marcus Bontempelli and Tom Liberatore ahead of returning to training. Picture: Michael Klein

The next hurdle is getting back to playing. He wants to do it immediately, but the Bulldogs’ fitness staff are putting the brakes on that with a consensus he won’t be seen in the VFL for at least 4-6 weeks, potentially longer.

Ugle-Hagan’s daily social media posts show he has more than kept up his general fitness with endless shots in gyms and boxing sessions, but that’s a long way from playing competitive football.

The last thing anyone wants in this scenario is a rushed return that causes an injury which puts him back in the wilderness.

There is a lot at play in the big picture over the next 10 weeks in terms of Ugle-Hagan’s future at the Bulldogs or elsewhere.

It’s understood the AFL, which has played a pivotal role in helping Ugle-Hagan through a mental health plan, has made it clear it won’t allow the 23-year-old to sit out the entire season and then initiate a trade in October.

He has to show he’s capable of being part of a football club again, that he can cope with the demands of being a professional athlete. The AFL’s medical team needs to be convinced before he will get the green light to do anything.

There are many who believe Sydney and the Brisbane Lions are monitoring the situation and have made it clear they would be willing to roll the dice on him next year.

Ugle-Hagan is contracted to the Dogs for 2026 and the reality is the club’s hierarchy is unsure whether he will see out his contract. They would love to be pleasantly surprised by his behaviour in the coming months and see him playing in the VFL, but they don’t want to be distracted by getting their hopes up.

Beveridge said this week he’d made it clear to his star forward that the club wouldn’t be wasting resources – which it had been forced to do over the past 12 months – on keeping him on track at the expense of the rest of the playing group.

Bulldogs insiders say Jamara Ugle-Hagan seems different upon his return to Whitten Oval. Picture: NewsWire / Diego Fedele

“It was important we spent some time together and talked about some simple things, some basic objectives to aspire to in this period of time and we’ve done that. I am comfortable with the platform now,” Beveridge said.

“The challenges still remain for a young man who has been away from the club for a period of time and the question mark will be, ‘Can you be compliant, be here when you need to build this next part of your career?’

“He knows that and we are hoping he wakes up every morning with some enthusiasm to come in and improve his footy, but get his life back on track.

“We’ll keep an open mind, that’s the commitment at the moment and if it falters, we’ll need to work through why and understand it again.

“It’s a bit like the question around who will he play for and when will it be? It’s a bit of an unknown because there will be some tests still along the way.”

One player who knows a bit about what Ugle-Hagan is going through is Greater Western Sydney star Jesse Hogan who lost his way at Melbourne and Fremantle before he found peace in western Sydney and became arguably the best forward in the competition.

“The biggest thing for me when I was going through a rough patch was I just lost passion for the game, I didn’t enjoy the grind,” Hogan said. “It became really tough and that’s when my mind kind of wandered.

“I didn’t really enjoy going to work. I didn’t enjoy getting to the club. I wasn’t enjoying the small things that when you were 16 or 17, you did enjoy.

“Until you figure out the smaller things and you can really strip it all back and start to enjoy those things and put really good people around you … it can get really hard.

“He (Ugle-Hagan) can make it work, absolutely he can.”

More than anyone Ugle-Hagan has to build a bridge with Bontempelli who reached out over the summer to help his troubled teammate but was burnt by the experience.

“Ultimately, I want him to just enjoy being back in the environment – hopefully getting to the stage in the not-too-distant future where he can look at playing again,” Bontempelli said on Friday.

Bontempelli knows there are another three words regarding Ugle-Hagan which are being used in the Bulldogs inner-sanctum: “Is it sustainable?”