Fiery confrontation between Des Hasler and Ricky Stuart exposed

The expletive war of words between two NRL coaches has added a nasty twist with the pair reportedly coming face-to-face post-game.

Ricky Stuart and Des Hasler.

The war between Ricky Stuart and Des Hasler has added an explosive twist with reports revealing the two came face-to-face on Sunday night.

News of a confrontation between the pair surfaced on Monday afternoon by News Corps Dean Ritchie.

Watch every game of every round this NRL Telstra Premiership Season LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial today >

Several witnesses confirmed the heated run-in that took place just outside the Raiders rooms and ended with Stuart allegedly saying “f*** you” to Hasler, Ritchie reports.

Veteran journalist Buzz Rothfield shed further light on the ugly altercation on Fox League’s NRL 360.

“Bulldog Richie’s got the story on the Telegraph website, about 20 minutes after the game after Des had done his press conference and blown up about what we’ve just spent five minutes talking about, he went to the Canberra Raiders dressing room and he wanted to see Ricky before Ricky went to his press conference,” Rothfield said.

“He wanted to man up and tell Ricky to his face that he had just sprayed the referee and wasn’t happy and thought his team should have got the money.

“Ricky came outside and they stood there and had a reasonably heated exchange that went on for a minute or so.”

The coaches reportedly came face-to-face.

Hasler unleashed over the standard of officiating in his side’s 21-20 golden point loss against the Raiders.

“I’ll be the first to say that we were ill-disciplined in parts, but my opinion, I thought the refereeing performance was pretty poor,” Hasler said.

“I think a lopsided penalty count, particularly in the area of 10 six-agains to one.

“Some of those are warranted, some of those I’ll buy. It just leads to just battling field position all the time.

“Possession ends up 60-40, yep, sure, some of that’s our own fault.

“But it’s difficult and I’m pretty proud of the effort and that’s why it’s heartbreaking.

“And I’ve got some doubt around the off-side nature of the charge down. Did they review it? They didn’t review it. Why not?

“So from that point of view, it was heartbreaking. But we’ll learn a bit out of it. And then we’ll go forward. We’ll get ready for next week. Dust ourselves off. We’re playing a Manly side that are playing pretty good footy at the moment.”

Des was not a happy man. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

As we now know, Stuart’s remarks in his press conference came after he’d been involved in a heated exchange with Hasler.

The Raiders coach blasted his counterpart and said the Titans had been cheating throughout the entire contest.

“F**k me he’s on another planet mate,” Stuart said.

“If he is critical of the six-agains and the penalty count he is on another planet.

“I just said, he coached well. Him and Whitey coached well.

“But the way they cheated when they were standing there with the hand on the ball holding over the ball.

“The way they cheated on the ground. If we want to go back to last year or the years we have had. No worries, we will start cheating and start wrestling as well.

“The games we have had, the game has been going real good without that type of wrestle in the ruck.

“I feel sorry for Kasey (Badger). The way they were in her face all night I felt sorry for Casey out there tonight.

“But she had to withstand a lot of pressure and I can’t believe we have lost the interpretation because we were told at the start of the year if you are going to be a repeat offender you get sent.

Stuart whacked Hasler. Picture: NRL Photos/Gregg Porteous

“You have a look at the amount of repeat offenders and the amount of extra seconds they got on the ground.

“I wasn’t going to mention this, but that is what I spoke to the players about after the game.

“I was so proud about how they stuck to their processes with the football because they could have got really frustrated tonight.

“You don’t cheat to win a fast play-the-ball when you have got the football.

“But if he thinks they got hard done by, by Kasey tonight he is on a completely different planet.

“And I tell you what I’ll do. I am going to make sure I ring (ref boss) Jared (Maxwell) tomorrow to find out who is right or wrong there.

“I thought Kasey did a really good job tonight. We should have got another 10 or 12 six-agains.

“The game has been a good spectacle this year, so if we are going to go back to that and I will be asking Jared.

“If we are going to go back to what happened tonight, fine we will do an extra wrestle session with Josh Miller every week. I’ll make that call.”

Originally published as Fiery confrontation between Des Hasler and Ricky Stuart exposed