{"id":454020,"date":"2026-05-31T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/454020\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T12:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T12:00:16","slug":"benji-marshall-makes-telling-confession-as-bulldogs-set-to-lodge-complaints-with-nrl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/454020\/","title":{"rendered":"Benji Marshall makes telling confession as Bulldogs set to lodge complaints with NRL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wests Tigers coach Benji Marshall<\/a> has admitted his team \u201cdodged a bullet\u201d and \u201cgot lucky\u201d when the Bulldogs had a try to Josh Curran disallowed on Saturday night. And Canterbury coach Cameron Ciraldo says he will air his grievances in an email to the NRL<\/a> after feeling the Bulldogs were on the wrong end of several refereeing calls in their 22-16 loss.<\/p>\n

The most contentious call of the game came when Curran charged down a Jarome Luai kick and raced away to score what appeared to be a fair try. But the Bunker chalked it off because Curran had made contact with Luai\u2019s kicking leg.<\/p>\n

\"Benji<\/p>\n

Benji Marshall admitted his Wests Tigers got a bit lucky against the Bulldogs. Image: Fox League<\/p>\n

Under the black and white letter of the law it was the correct decision, but it left the NRL world fuming. Even Marshall admitted in his press conference: “I like that we’re protecting kickers but I thought we dodged a bullet there to be honest.”<\/p>\n

However replays also appeared to show that Curran never grounded the ball before his arm went over the touch in-goal line. Nevertheless, Ciraldo was left incredulous over that and a number of other calls.<\/p>\n

Ciraldo thought Sunia Turuva was off-side when he clattered into Bulldogs fullback Jacob Kiraz without the ball before Jeral Skelton scored, and the Canterbury coach thought Stephen Crichton got the ball down for a try that was also disallowed. Replays appeared to show Turuva was behind the kicking foot of Luai and the collision with Kiraz was simply a contest for the ball.<\/p>\n

Cameron Ciraldo set to lodge complaints with NRL<\/p>\n

Crichton also had a teammate unmarked on his outside when he went himself and was held up by a brilliant try-saver from Jahream Bula. But Ciraldo was still unhappy and shifted the blame away from his team, which failed to covert 53 per cent of possession and a 7-0 set-restart count.<\/p>\n

\"Bulldogs<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs thought they were dudded against the Tigers.<\/p>\n

(Brendon Thorne via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

“I’m sending another email this week and I’ll get something written back,” Ciraldo said. “The Josh Curran one, maybe the charge down is gone – his foot did touch him – but Josh charged the ball down first, chasing the kick and then Jarome’s foot hit him.<\/p>\n

“If that’s the way it is, I’ll cop that. Jarome clearly didn’t think it was a penalty because he turned and chased.<\/p>\n

“The more disappointing one was to go down the other end. Someone off-side takes out our fullback and then that’s a try. What’s worse? Someone touches your foot or someone takes out your fullback and they score a try.”<\/p>\n

On social media, opinion was heavily divided on whether the Bulldogs were dudded or only had themselves to blame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wests Tigers coach Benji Marshall has admitted his team \u201cdodged a bullet\u201d and \u201cgot lucky\u201d when the Bulldogs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5636,18784,20174,79711,32701,111,139,577,69,213,33815],"class_list":["post-454020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-benji-marshall","tag-bulldogs","tag-cameron-ciraldo","tag-jarome-luai","tag-josh-curran","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrl","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-wests-tigers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}