‘Fine line between punishment, humiliation’: Big question in Bulldogs saga

The Canterbury Bulldogs have had the week from hell over their training punishment furore but it appears to be the tip of the iceberg.

Matty Johns said there's a "very fine line between punishment and humiliation". Photo: Getty Images

Premiership winner Matthew Johns has revealed some training punishment horror stories after the Bulldogs saga dominated the final week of the NRL regular season.

Reports of a player walking out of the club after being punished for being late to training ignited a firestorm as rugby league reckoned with the use of punishments in the game.

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Speaking on his SEN show Morning Glory with Matty Johns on Friday morning, Johns was joined by Sydney Morning Herald reporter Andrew Webster and Bloke in a Bar’s Denan Kemp to discuss the issue.

Johns said it was hard to wade through what really went on.

The sequence of events has dripped out but the reports point to the player in question wrestling 20 of his teammates over four minutes, or three-and-a-half minutes, as Webster said on the show.

Even this is contested as the player claimed the schedule for the day said it was strapping from 8am and training began at 8.30am. As the player didn’t need strapping, he believed he was early for the session.

Regardless, the player was subjected to the punishment and was reportedly left exhausted afterwards.

The Bulldogs have been in the spotlight. Photo by Jeremy Ng/Getty Images

But Webster said there was a big question the Bulldogs had yet to answer.

“If they knew that this player had a history of mental health issues and then still subjected him to that sort of punitive action for turning up late, I think there are some major questions for the Bulldogs to answer there,” Webster said.

He added that he’d inquired with the NRL about an investigation and that the league said it was waiting for the Bulldogs.

“I’m sorry, if you’re going to tick the box of being mental health advocates, as the NRL does, they need to get their hands all over this,” Webster concluded.

Johns tiptoed into the subject, saying that some former players wade into the discussion without fully understanding or knowing the circumstances or what had occurred and stressed he was talking in generalisations.

“I’ll say this broad brush from my experience — there’s a very fine line between punishment and humiliation,” Johns said.

“I’ve been back at clubs — and I know this is eons ago — but I’ve seen some of the stuff that players have had to do as so-called punishment.

“I remember saying to a coach one day ‘what are you doing here? Is this punishment or is this just trying to embarrass the bloke?’

“I’ve seen situations at a club where a player got so pushed to the brink by a trainer that he grabbed him by the throat.

“An old teammate of mine shared a story about one day a trainer tried to get players to jump in the water and swim in the open ocean and a couple of players couldn’t swim and said ‘no, no, get in there’.

“Once again, I’ll come back to I don’t know what’s happened in the Bulldogs situation. Some of the punishment, if you’re going to do a punishment, the player has to take something out of it. But I think sometimes getting a young player, for instance, and I’ve seen this happen, get on the rower and they row to the point they fall off the rower.

“And some of the dialogue that happens around that, I think there has to be a balance.”

Webster said he’d asked questions of the club over whether it was divided but said that a senior player and his manager and a small group of other players are unhappy with the training methodology and techniques at the club.

He added: “I don’t think it’s as divided as it’s reported to be.”

Cameron Ciraldo’s methods are in the spotlight.

There were reports of text messages which were leaked to media which had players complaining about the long 8am-5.30pm workdays.

It was a point Ciraldo discussed when questioned on Thursday.

“Nothing comes without hard work, we have one long day a week and if you get the last massage you‘re probably leaving at 5.30pm,” Ciraldo said. “The days were longer at the place I was previously (at Penrith).

“Nobody has come to me and complained about long days, we‘ve got a Jersey Flegg (under 21s) group who do weights at 5am, work for 10 hours and come back and do field at 5.30pm.

“We‘ve got a leadership group that we meet with every week and you’d like to think if there was some unrest that those guys would have brought it up.”

And while there have been anonymous complaints from players over the training scandal, the likes of Reed Mahoney and Viliame Kikau have defended the situation at the club.

Webster said part of the issue is that this is the first year of a rebuild for the Bulldogs and that some are comparing Ciraldo’s first season with fellow former Panthers assistant turned Warriors head coach Andrew Webster, who has taken New Zealand to a top four finish.

Johns added that if there is a senior player who is disgruntled and agitating in the background, that’s the attitude “they’ve got to weed out”.

Former Bronco Denan Kemp said one of the issues may be about an inexperienced player not understanding the purpose of the punishment.

“In the Bulldogs’ defence, if they can’t be defended, it’s very hard to judge what you can and can’t do off a young player coming through,” he said. “Sometimes the young player doesn’t realise what the punishment was for or maybe doesn’t realise that he is cutting corners.

“Me for example, I sooked heaps of times. I never left training or whatever but if there was a session that wasn’t on that came on, I definitely sooked and needed senior players to be like ‘pull your head in’.

“I didn’t see the benefit of it until I got a little bit older. They’re just in a really hard spot.”

It’s been a long hard year for the Bulldogs. Photo by Jenny Evans/Getty Images

Kemp added that it pointed to a lack of senior leadership at the club after former captain Josh Jackson retired at the end of last year.

Johns took aim at the army camp culture which had sprung up in rugby league as teams sought to emulate the Melbourne Storm.

Johns said the Storm used it for players in their first year in the club as a “filter” to show the coaches certain things about the players.

But as other clubs have followed suit, it’s been a race to who can do the most difficult.

“The physical is one thing, I have no problem with the physical,” Johns said. “But it’s all the other stuff that comes with it.

“Sometimes we went on army camps and they’re striving to humiliate and break you down. Hang on a second boys, we’re not going to war.”

Webster said he understood Willie Mason’s comments on his podcast during the week when he called the players complaining about the training schedule “soft as s**t”.

The Bulldogs have long been built on the Dogs of War attitude as Mason did in his day but Webster said “the club’s gone through so much change and young players are different”.