‘It’s not for everyone’: Cameron Ciraldo holds the line on Bulldogs standards

Debate has raged in the NRL fraternity over whether or not Jackson Topine was tough enough for the NRL - but most seem to be ignoring the argument at the centre of the $4m lawsuit - was a line crossed?

Cameron Ciraldo. Picture: NRL Photos

Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo says rugby league “isn’t for everyone”.

Immortal Andrew Johns sings from the same songsheet: the game, he reckons – well, “it’s not for everyone”.

The two men, the coach and commentator, were responding to Jackson Topine’s $4m lawsuit against the Canterbury-Bankstown club that has shocked and divided the sport.

Everyone knows rugby league is a tough, uncompromising work environment. Everyone who plays at an elite level understands it runs on a fuel mixed with blood, sweat and potentially irreversible brain injuries.

And as the rugby league fraternity has its passionate conversations about Topine’s “crazy” claim that could potentially “bring down the game”, they are missing the point.

Topine’s lawsuit isn’t about whether or not he was tough enough – it’s about whether or not a line was crossed. Topine argues it was. He says he was left humiliated and psychologically destroyed after a Bulldogs punishment session at Smeaton Grange on July 18, 2023.

Jackson Topine. Picture: NRL Photos

What’s also been lost in the debate around 22-year-old Topine and his pursuit of $4m in lost earnings due to his injuries was that this kid was no fringe player.

He was a former Australian Schoolboys captain with a bright future. Such was his attitude that he was given the accolade of Bulldogs club person of the year in 2021. He played under-18s State of Origin.

There was nothing in his past to suggest that the kid was “soft”. Nothing to question his commitment to the “family club”. When Ciraldo wanted a new club song, his teammates voted on Topine to do it as he was a player who epitomised the club spirit. He was signed to the Bulldogs at 15 and as he said upon debut: “I would die for this club … I bleed blue and white.”

Now the majority of the NRL pack are slamming his position of taking a stand against what his lawyers claim was “unlawful corporal punishment” that left him broken.

The fierce heat instead is on Topine – the person who had all his dreams shattered in a morning training session.

Ciraldo on Tuesday doubled down on the club’s firm narrative that this football environment he was employed to overhaul – alongside NRL supremo Phil “Gus” Gould – is heading in the right ­direction.

Ciraldo has spoken repeatedly about “uphold(ing) standards” and “changing behaviours”, and this week he again defended the session in question, saying an NRL training ground was a unique workplace where there is an expectation of toughness.

“Well, it is a different workplace,” Ciraldo said on Tuesday at a press conference. “It’s not for everyone, it’s a tough environment, it’s a tough game and it’s just different. It’s hard to do – if it wasn’t, everyone would be doing it. I’m very comfortable with what we have been able to do in 18 months and the people we have brought in.”

It echoed what Johns had said on The Sunday Footy Show on Nine two days earlier, where he passionately defended the punishment and training. The Immortal explained tough sessions such as these were all about determining character. “You get to a point where you’re training hard and the players are watching and you are getting flogged,” Johns said.

“You get to … breaking point; you see the character of the person. It means that when it hits the fan on the field, you can trust them. A professional sport, especially a contact sport, which is so tough – it’s not for everyone. There’s only a small percentage of the population that can play at that top level. If you’re not up to it, then you’re not a part of it.

“When the blowtorch (is) applied to the belly out on the field, that’s when you see the true character. You’ve got to work them out and the way to work that out is to get them to training, get them to the point of breaking so you can see their true character.”

Johns argues that, through his complaint, Topine did not possess what it takes to make it in the NRL, adding “I could not imagine another club would pick Jackson up”.

That Topine’s NRL career is over is something both his supporters and detractors agree upon. In a sport where almost anything – from sexual violence to domestic violence to betting against your own team – can be forgiven by the fraternity, Topine has broken the code by calling out alleged bullying behaviour within.

Speak to players in the game and those newly retired and they will say that in rugby league they often train harder than they play, and this will all come under scrutiny if matter makes it to court.

Eight months ago, when bare details of the punishment session trickled out into the press, reports that said an unnamed Bulldogs player had walked out and hadn’t come back after wrestling “12 players”, former NRL player turned media star Matthew Johns talked about it on his radio show. He started a conversation around “the line”.

He said the reported punishment tiptoed along the line between setting high standards and workplace bullying.

“There is a fine line between punishment and humiliation,” he said. “Some of the stuff I’ve seen players do as ‘so-called’ punishments (is ridiculous). Is it punishment, or are you just trying to embarrass the bloke? If you’re going to do a punishment, the player has to take something out of it. There has to be a better balance.”

A judge in the NSW Supreme Court will now be called on to say where that line is.