Nudie runs, no sleep and chilli eating: What really happens at NRL training sessions
A multimillion-dollar claim lodged by a former Bulldog shines a light on the ways some clubs punish players for perceived infractions.
A former Bulldogs player said it wasn’t uncommon across the NRL for players to wrestle 10 to 14 teammates as part of a drill known in rugby league circles as “shark bait”.
Some clubs roll a dice, some spin a wheel, but it all adds up to the same thing – how to instil discipline among the players. The imposition of fines is still commonplace, but there is a range of other punishments at clubs across the NRL that hurt more than just the hip pocket.
This week lawyers representing former Bulldog Jackson Topine lodged a statement of claim for A$4 million (NZ$4.4m) and are alleging he had been forced to wrestle 30-35 teammates as punishment for turning up late to training. Canterbury and head trainer Travis Touma are yet to file defences in relation to the proceedings.
The allegations in the statement of claim have raised questions as to how clubs throughout the NRL punish players for breaking team expectations, a practice that has long been part of the professional rugby league environment, framed against a narrative of the individual letting down the collective.
A number of current and former players – all talking anonymously in order to speak freely – said punishments were commonplace across the league but could vary from club to club.
At one club, a transgressor is made to run naked through a tunnel of his teammates who slap and spank him as he goes. At another, a player might be forced to clean the gear stewards’ van or eat hot chilli peppers.
Another player was once ordered by his head coach to run back to the team’s headquarters from a nearby sporting complex because he wasn’t happy with the fitness levels displayed in the session. The rest of the team caught the bus back.
Then there are the punishments that move beyond the merely physical, when players are forced to shave their heads, dye their hair or wear a suit every day to training.
One club would force recalcitrant players to prepare a PowerPoint presentation on a random topic and deliver it to his teammates.
It is not always the coach, or his assistants, who impose the punishment. At one club, a former club chief executive ordered three young players to be at training at 6am for a gruelling session on the rowing machine and exercise bikes after learning they had been escorted drunk from their leagues club the night before.
One player said he would often see players forced to wrestle their whole team, as Topine had been made to do at the Bulldogs last year.
Sources at the Bulldogs, talking anonymously in order to speak freely, said the alleged incident involving Topine was the first time a player at their club had been made to wrestle the whole team as a punishment.
But the sources said the same punishment was meted out to a second Canterbury player for being late to training a week after Topine allegedly endured the
same sanction.
Braidon Burns, who has since joined South Sydney, told Bulldogs staff at the time of his late arrival to training that he had no issues about having to wrestle the rest of the team and he did not expect to be treated differently to Topine.
Burns declined to comment when contacted on Wednesday but another former Bulldogs player said it wasn’t uncommon across the NRL for players to wrestle 10 to 14 teammates as part of a drill known in rugby league circles as “shark bait”.
Shark bait is when players circle a player and the individual in the middle will have to continue wrestling his peers until he defeats one of them.
The former player said this happened at almost every club and players would have been subjected to worse situations in pre-season training, where they often went through army-style camps, where they are asked to undertake gruelling activities for three days while being deprived of sleep.
During those camps, players are woken up at all hours of the night and ordered to perform physically demanding exercises under duress to test their physical and mental stamina, often on a heavily rationed diet.
One player recalled being blindfolded and ushered out into the ocean. The players would be smashed by waves and then
taken out to a point where they would be asked to make their own way back to land without any vision.
Another player recalled the team, already suffering from sleep deprivation and being billeted in basic living conditions, being made to spend hours in a room separating brown rice grains from white rice grains while heavy metal music was blasted at them through speakers. All the time they were told they had to remain silent.
Another player at another club told how he had to walk along a cliffside while wearing blacked-out goggles. Others told of how they were kept on constant edge by knowing they could be woken up at any time of the night and asked to carry two 25kg jerry cans for up to 5km, often causing their hands to bleed.
One team was divided into groups of three and told that at least one member of their squad would have to remain awake at any point during the three-day camp – with the threat of gruelling punishments if they failed.
Just this year, Manly coach Anthony Seibold described how difficult the army camp his team endured was. “They were sleep-deprived, they were gassed [exhausted], it was relentless,” Seibold said in January. “And that was the whole point, put them under extreme physical and mental pressure because you don’t know how you’re going to respond until you try it.”
So why do clubs put their players through such arduous tasks? It is for two reasons – to build a team spirit and to see how individuals act in the most stressful moments. The players will be pushed to the brink of breaking point to test their resilience and their ability to perform under extreme pressure.
The players said the pre-season camps also helped bond the team to triumph together through adversity.
It’s a tactic that can no doubt work. Penrith premiership-winning forward Zane Tetevano said in 2020 that he knew the Panthers were destined for glory after their collective effort at a pre-season army camp back at which the players lugged 20-litre jerry cans and two-metre PVC plumbing pipes filled with water up and down a hill for hours on end.
“I knew after our army camp, that’s when I knew there was something special about this team and what we could achieve,” Tetevano was reported as saying at the time.
“It was tough, it was gritty. It helped bring out the characters in a few guys and I think that has helped them achieve their full potential.”
The year of that army camp saw Penrith make it all the way to the grand final, where they lost 26-20 to the Melbourne Storm.
The next year, the Panthers coaching staff decided if they were going to go one better and win the premiership, they would have to stop being the nice guys of the NRL.
They organised what they dubbed a fight camp on an island on the Hawkesbury River, where the Panthers belted the daylights out of each other for three days.
There was no holding back. The coaches organised for boxers, wrestlers and mixed martial artists to come in to the camp and speak to the players. Players at that camp said they loved it.
But it’s a fine line, as Roosters coach Trent Robinson acknowledged this week when asked about the balancing act between pushing players to the maximum, without pushing them over the edge.
“You have to push players to be at their best, and you’ve got to care for them at the same time,” Robinson said. “You don’t always get it right, but if you care for your programme and the players that you have in that programme then, for the most part, you’ll get it right.”