I'll always put my hand up and admit it if I've made a mistake or done the wrong thing.
That's the way I am and I'll be teaching my kids to be the same way. It's important to own up to things if you're responsible for them.
Which is why I went to the judiciary on Tuesday to try an beat my hair-pulling charge from the weekend's game against the Bulldogs. It would have been easy just to forget about it and fork out the money for the fine. But I told Bedsy [GM Danny Buderus] I wanted to fight it because it didn't happen.
I can honestly say I didn't pull Ray Faitala-Mariner's hair. When I rang Ray to see if he would support me at the judiciary, he thought I was mucking around and geeing him up. He couldn't even remember when it was supposed to have happened.
So he gave evidence on my behalf, saying he couldn't even recall the supposed incident and I told the judiciary what had happened after looking at the video. Yes, I may have pushed down on Ray's head in the tackle but I didn't pull his hair. They didn't want to know about it.
In the end, they obviously didn't believe me because I lost the case. The hearing was done via a zoom conference which was just as well because I was pretty fired up over it. Just really frustrated.
There were a couple of other incidents in the game that didn't even rate a mention on the charge sheet.
Kalyn got hit late and Sione's injury came after what we thought was a "hanger" tackle where the third man in uses his weight to jam down on the legs of the player being held up with the ball. It's one of the new tackles that has crept in that they are supposed to be banning. But they didn't warrant charges apparently.
It was my fifth appearance before the judiciary to fight a charge and I had a 50 percent success rate prior to this one. This one has angered me the most though.
It capped off a very ordinary few days that kicked off with our disappointing loss to the Bulldogs. Again, we let ourselves down badly by coming out with the wrong attitude and throwing our attention to detail out the window.
Right from the start, we didn't respect the footy but didn't react on the field to fix it. It was one of those days again where we just expected it to happen for us but when it did at the back end of the game, it was too late.
It proved once again that we are still nowhere near where we need to get to as a footy side when it comes to being mentally prepared to work hard for the full 80 minutes against any opposition, no matter where they are on the ladder.
I really feel for the boys who picked up injuries and they are starting to bite pretty hard. But all it does is gives some other players in our squad who have been training really hard alongside the rest of us an opportunity.
