Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo acknowledges he has high expectations for his players but insists his beliefs won't change as he seeks to rebuild the club into a premiership force.
Following reports of a player walking out on training after being sanctioned with a physical punishment for being late, Ciraldo this week defended his methods and said he is unaware of any player expressing concern about the culture or workload at Canterbury-Bankstown.
The first-year head coach believes the majority of the playing group have bought into the direction he is taking the club in and said the changes taking place are required in order to drive on-field improvement.
“There’s some people that don’t want to buy into what we’re doing, but I don’t think it’s a great amount of people,” Ciraldo said.
“It’s not a widespread thing. There might a couple of guys that don’t agree with the direction we’re going, but I’m surrounded by people that know what winning looks like, they come from good systems, I am surrounded by people that have been at the Bulldogs and won premierships at the Bulldogs.
"I’ll listen to those people.
They are rumours, but if there are people who don’t want to work hard and don’t want to tick every box to win NRL games, then they don’t have to be here.
Cameron Ciraldo
“No-one has come to me and said anything. We have got a leadership group we meet with every week and you’d like to think if there was some unrest those guys would have brought it up.
“It’s the NRL, nothing comes without hard work.... We have one long day a week and if you have the last massage, you are probably leaving at 5.30 [pm].
"The days were longer at the place I was previously (Penrith).
“We are sticking to the process. We know what success looks like, we have got a process behind it, we have got a lot of people buying into the process."
Ahead of their final game of the season against the Titans on Sunday, the Bulldogs are set for a 15th-placed finish and have now missed out on finals football for the past seven seasons.
Ciraldo – who previously won back-to-back premierships as an assistant to Ivan Cleary at the Panthers – said that as was the case at Penrith, instilling a winning culture would be a hard process that wouldn’t be achieved overnight.
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He added that new standards have been put in place throughout 2023 at Belmore – with punctuality a non-negotiable – and that methods of upholding those standards vary.
“At different times we have wanted to put some standards in place and obviously if you are late then we have to do something about that,” Ciraldo said.
“We are trying to drive standards. We want to have winning performance standards and a lot of that is around individual responsibilities and we have to hold those standards.
“At different times I think every group goes through times when your standards are challenged and ours have been challenged at certain times.
Bulldogs v Sea Eagles - Round 26, 2023
“We have gone through a range of different ways of talking about holding standards. Some of that has been monetary related, some of it has been spinning a wheel and then some of it has been trying to find ways to change behaviours.
“The reality is we need to change behaviours here and I think we have done a good job of that throughout the season and we will continue to find ways where we can change behaviours to winning behaviours.”