It's impossible to stick up for Paul Vaughan and the rest of the Dragons players after their COVID breach on the weekend.
They are now paying a massive price for what they did but they must have known they were doing the wrong thing. They not only breached the NRL's footy protocols, they broke the law.
And in doing so, they put the entire game in jeopardy and the livelihoods of the thousands of people who work in it at risk as well.
I have no idea why they would have done it. I've played with Paul Vaughan at representative level and he's a good fella - a knockabout bloke. I can understand the Dragons boys were riding a bit of a wave after their come-from-behind win over the Warriors and wanted to stick together and celebrate.
But Vaughany has been around a fair while now and should have known better than to organise it and there were enough senior blokes in that group to pull it up so that it never went ahead.
It's hard to believe the way the game is right now they would risk it but even more so with everyone else in lockdown in Sydney, did they not think that someone would dob them in for doing the wrong thing?
All they have done is heap embarrassment on themselves and their club and because of the penalties, they have put a possible finals berth in jeopardy which would be shattering for Dragons fans.
The punishment for Vaughany in particular is savage but like I said, it's difficult to stick up for anyone involved.
As far as the Knights are concerned, when we came back from our week off from the rep bye and immediately went into the bubble again, Adz [coach Adam O'Brien] didn't miss us.
The first thing we did was hold a meeting when we got back where Adz read us the riot act about the protocols in place and how we had to strictly adhere to them. He didn't pull any punches and he was that fired up, it was like someone had already stepped out of line.
Danny Buderus was at the meeting and so was Phil Gardner [CEO] and they all stressed the importance of making sure everyone followed the rules to the letter. Adz even spoke about us putting everything in jeopardy including our quest to make the finals if even one of us did the wrong thing. He didn't want anyone wrecking our run home and all the hard work to get us here.
I don't know whether Dragons officials had the same sort of discussions with their players but if they did, it makes their players' actions even harder to fathom.
As for us, it was great to see so many smiling faces in the dressingroom after our win over the Cowboys last weekend. To have most of our key players back made a huge difference. But we all know we still have to keep building on that performance.
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