Cameron Ciraldo discusses mutiny ‘rumours’ after Bulldogs player walks out on the club.
UPDATE: Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo has addressed accusations that a player walked out on the club following a violent punishment at training. He declined to comment on the specific instance but admitted that his team used a punishment system to “drive standards”.
Ciraldo spoke to the media on Wednesday, amid claims that a top-30 player has been absent from the club for five weeks after being forced to wrestle up to a dozen of his teammates at the end of a training session because he arrived late. He declined to comment on the incident or clarify whether he wanted the player to return.
“It’s all rumours, including text message rumours. “No one has come to me and complained about long days,” Ciraldo stated.
“The long days, we have a Flegg group that comes in and does weights at 5 a.m., goes to work for 10 hours, and then returns to do a field session at 5.30 p.m.
“That’s a long day and the way those guys are going about their business, they’re showing us that they’re future Bulldogs that we’re going to build the club around.”
Ciraldo disagreed that the expectations at the Bulldogs were over and above the ordinary “NRL standard” noting the Panthers, where he was an assistant coach for their back-to-back premierships, were
“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. The days were longer at the place I was previously,” Ciraldo said.
“I don’t know about this ‘toxic’ culture,” he added.
“There might be certain people who don’t want to buy into what we’re doing but I don’t think it’s a great amount of people. We’ve got a lot of people, a lot of players working hard inside these four walls and we’ve got a lot of people doing really good things.
“It’s not a widespread thing, there might be a few guys who don’t like the direction we’re going, but we’ve got some people, I’m surrounded by people who know what winning looks like, I’ve come from good systems, I’m surrounded by Bulldogs people who won premierships at the Bulldogs and they know what this club’s built on, and I’ll listen to those people.”
Ciraldo said that if there were current Bulldogs players who didn’t like the direction the club was going in they were welcome to leave.
However, he claimed it was difficult to get to the truth beneath the scuttlebutt because none of his players had approached him to complain about the club’s standards.
“It’s difficult to address those rumors since no one has come to me and stated anything. We have a leadership group that we meet with every week, and you’d assume that if there was any dissent, those people would have brought it up,” he explained.
“But it has not been brought up. They are rumors, but if there are people who do not want to work hard and check every box to win NRL games, they do not need to be here.”
The Bulldogs are expected to finish 15th on the standings following a challenging season. Ciraldo acknowledges that fans of the team may have struggled to see development, since they won the same number of games in a dismal 2022.
Bulldogs general manager Phil Gould surprisingly told Nine’s 100% Footy earlier this season that he wished the club had been able to hire Ciraldo 12 months later so that they could get one more year of pain out of the way without him, but when pressed on the matter, the coach said he didn’t agree.
“I’m pleased to be here. We need to go through this right now to see who will come on the
