Josh Morris leapt in the air and punched an imaginary giant in the face. He’d just scored a try under the posts that would take his team to a 14-point lead, and when he landed back on earth he was mobbed by happy team-mates who knew: we are going to win. And in Dog Land in 2017, such things are celebrated like Monopoly bank errors in your favour: as surprising as they are enjoyable.
Earlier winger Marcelo Montoya had twice profited from fine cut-out passes by Will Hopoate, who won the plaudits of the pundits. Yet it was Josh Jackson’s hard, incisive, and most importantly convincing decoy runs that twice sucked Manly in and exposed their flank. Jackson ran like he meant it.
It is Jackson’s off-the-ball effort and Morris’s passion that has been missing from much of the Bulldogs work this season. Indeed they’ve struggled to convince people they even care. They’ve been listless, bloodless, like unpaid soldiers fighting an unpopular war. They’ve been north of that only a few times since. Sunday’s win was Canterbury’s third in 13 starts since April.
Yet in front of their die-hard, Braveheart fans – and those from the northern beaches who made the journey and numbered perhaps 11 – the Bulldogs played like the competitive hard-arses their roster suggests they should be. Their forwards competed hard in the ruck. Wingers Montoya and Brett Morris ran like proverbial hairy goats and scored four of six tries. Before this match the Bulldogs had scored just 49 tries all season, the lowest number in the comp. Next worst Wests Tigers have 62.
When yards have been hard and lungs are threatening to shoot out one’s mouth, the Bulldogs have wilted. You can’t accuse them of not trying from these cheap seats; league players don’t so much play rugby league as fight in it. But the fact is they have looked terrible. And they have looked like they don’t care.
Fans can find that hard to understand, outside looking in, how a professional sportsman, paid to do one job – play footy – can not be totally into it all the time. But for players, the game is a job. It’s a fun, cool and occasional glorious job. But it’s their profession. Sometimes it’s a slog. They sign short-term contracts. And when you don’t know if you’ll be at the job next year, or who the coach is going to be, and your best mates have been shopped to the opposition, it can sap enthusiasm.
Shopped? There’s a fire sale at the Bulldogs. They’ve over-spent on massive, back-ended deals in 2018 and asked recruitment types at other clubs to take a pick. They’re all on the table, every one of them. And the players know it. Because players talk. When they aren’t lifting heavy things and sweating and watching hours of video in preparation for an 80-minute match, players sit in cafes and wander golf courses and talk. To each other, to their managers, to friendly press. They talk money. They gossip. As in any industry.
And what Bulldogs players have been talking about is their club’s financials and thus by extension their very futures in rugby league. Salary cap pressure – brought on by suits in high office going with Des Hasler when he said he must have player X, do what you must – means players aren’t sure if they’re wanted. It can breed cynicism. The club has already brushed favourite son Josh Reynolds to fit in Dessie’s muse Kieran Foran. Sam Kasiano is out, Aaron Woods is in. They swapped Mick Ennis for Michael Lichaa and got the raw end of the prawn.
Sure, you say, but they’re professional athletes paid to do a job – get on with it. And as one NRL player says, “It could be unsettling not knowing. But existing contracts have to be honoured so there’s certainty in that”. Sure – but there’s more to it. Guys with families will need to find schools for kids and jobs for wives. Some don’t know if there’ll even be a place for them in the NRL or even Britain. In the very game.
“It’s purely the reason for their season,” reckoned Mark Gasnier on Fox Sports. “I’d have thought Des would be a senior enough coach to handle it but if you’re one of those that control the roster, you have to have the ability to move on a player and it not affect the group. The only ones who’ve done it really well consistently are Craig Bellamy and Wayne Bennett.”
Added Lara Pitt: “I’ve heard the players want this season to be over. They’re sick of turning up to training. Nothing’s changing. No tactical change. There’s nothing they can do – the squad is what it is. But Des is sticking to his guns.”
Ah, Des Hasler, the man upon whom much of the malaise must rest given he’s club coach, recruitment manager and ultimate football overlord. He hasn’t signed a halfback. Moses Mbye’s a fullback playing halfback and hooker. Hopoate’s a better winger than fullback. Lichaa rarely runs.
The buck must also stop with Ray Dib, chairman of the board, who extended Hasler’s contract less than two weeks after a horrendous – and in hindsight telling – 36-0 loss to Manly. The Dogs have since signed Woods and Foran while James Graham and Greg Eastwood, to name a couple, are on massive, back-ended deals.
Dib is now in constant discussion with fellow travellers – senior suits at the Raiders, Roosters, Sharks et al – about how to get League Central to increase 2018’s salary cap or allow something of an “amnesty” for those who’ve exceeded it. And thus a club that can boast Graham, Jackson, Eastwood, Kasiano, Reynolds, David Klemmer, Aiden Tolman, Hopoate and the fabulous Morris twins, won’t make the finals for the first time in the Hasler era. And it’s no longer surprising.
