{"id":71019,"date":"2025-08-15T20:09:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T20:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/71019\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T20:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T20:09:16","slug":"canterbury-bulldogs-coach-cameron-ciraldos-stinging-message-for-players-after-loss-to-sydney-roosters-stephen-crichton-jaeman-salmon-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/71019\/","title":{"rendered":"Canterbury Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo’s stinging message for players after loss to Sydney Roosters; Stephen Crichton, Jaeman Salmon speak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bulldogs<\/a> coach Cameron Ciraldo<\/a> shouldered blame after Friday night’s defeat to the Roosters<\/a> but hit his players with a stinging message in the same seething breath.<\/p>\n

Fronting the press after the 32-12 loss at Allianz Stadium, a furious Ciraldo conceded a few of his players weren’t hungry enough and suggested some may pay a price at the selection table.<\/p>\n

“I sort of blame myself there because guys are carrying niggles and they just get through training instead of actually training,” Ciraldo said.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Scuffle erupts in Roosters-Dogs clash after dubious tackle<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Dead set’: Flanno left seething as costly call denies Dragons<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Johns’ blunt message for Sharks fans amid finals venues debate<\/a><\/p>\n

“I’m gonna stop that.<\/p>\n

“If you can’t train, it sort of results in a performance like that.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got a deep squad, we’ve got a lot of good players that didn’t play tonight.<\/p>\n

“So if we don’t want to prepare to win, then I’ll put someone in that does want to prepare to win.”<\/p>\n

\"Bulldogs<\/p>\n

Bulldogs captain Stephen Crichton and Cameron Ciraldo talk to the press.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n

Ciraldo’s frustration boiled to the surface when he was asked if the new-look spine had contributed to the bumpy recent run of his Bulldogs, who have now lost two of their past three games.<\/p>\n

“I think everyone was pissing in our pocket last week about how good it looked, so [I’m] not too concerned about that,” said the 40-year-old coach.<\/p>\n

Watch the 2025 NRL premiership live and free on Nine and 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs began the round 24 match as favourites. After all, this was a team sitting third on the ladder facing a team placed ninth. And while the Bulldogs were considered genuine title contenders heading in (they still are), the Roosters<\/a> were supposedly in a rebuilding phase.<\/p>\n

But a week after outmuscling another top-eight side in the Warriors 32-14, the Bulldogs were smashed in the collision at Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n

As the Roosters went about racking up 1329 run metres, including 446 post-contact, the Dogs only managed 1148, including 308 post-contact.<\/p>\n

Middle forward Naufahu Whyte was outstanding, taking 17 carries for 113 run metres and scoring two tries, while edge forwards Angus Crichton and Egan Butcher were tremendous, too.<\/p>\n

The Roosters were also cleaner and more disciplined, and the Dogs repeatedly had their blue and white pants pulled down by crafty No.7 Sam Walker.<\/p>\n

In the past month, the Dogs have thrashed Manly, suffered a shock loss to Wests Tigers, beaten the Warriors comprehensively and fallen over against the Roosters.<\/p>\n

Ciraldo said his team had produced its two best and two worst games of the season in the past month.<\/p>\n

Asked if he could identify why his side hadn’t aimed up at Moore Park, he didn’t have an answer.<\/p>\n

“I thought we were ready to come here and [were] ready to put in another really good performance on the back of last week,” Ciraldo said.<\/p>\n

“So, no.<\/p>\n

“But when the intensity went up, a few guys didn’t want to go with it.”<\/p>\n

Canterbury skipper Stephen Crichton appeared both dejected and bemused in the post-match press conference.<\/p>\n

“I feel like we’re coming into the serious part of the year, and if you don’t get your mindset right coming into these big games, you’re gonna be sitting behind the posts most of the time,” Crichton said.<\/p>\n

“So you’d rather have this conversation now than leading into finals, and having that convo.<\/p>\n

“I feel like the mindset is the biggest thing going into these games, and just having [that] no victim mentality. You review your own game, keep yourself accountable, and then you can keep the other boys accountable, and when every player is doing that you’re gonna be a hard team to beat, and you’re preparing to win as well throughout the week.”<\/p>\n

Bulldogs utility Jaeman Salmon had a brief chat with Wide World of Sports before getting on the bus.<\/p>\n

“He [Ciraldo] was obviously disappointed [in the sheds at full-time]. He was angry, as were we, and he had every right to be,” Salmon said.<\/p>\n

“We had the perfect game we wanted in the first 20 [minutes] and then we just threw it back to them and gave them the game they wanted.<\/p>\n

“We made too many errors and gave away too many penalties and we just couldn’t defend them. They were physical and we just couldn’t aim up.”<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs will face the Storm, Panthers and Sharks in a gruelling finish to the regular season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo shouldered blame after Friday night’s defeat to the Roosters but hit his players with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-71019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}