Ask Cameron Ciraldo about everything taking place at the Bulldogs right now, and he’ll walk you from one room to the next here inside Belmore Sports Ground (Bulldogs HQ) where, over and over, that same phrase is continually writ large.
“Yeah, all over our walls,” he says, pointing up to yet another of those creeds which, painted in Canterbury-Bankstown blue, screams Club First, Team Second, Individual Third.
A mantra too, the coach stresses, “passed down over time” within these walls and now something “we focus on every day”.
Yet know this Bulldogs revolution, it’s about more too.
Understanding even last year, as Ciraldo sat high in that Sydney Olympic Park grandstand of Accor Stadium, watching his side get mercilessly beaten by Newcastle – final score, 66-blot -- said phrase was already on the walls, right?
Already ingrained too, or as best as it could be, in a team whose challenging 2023 campaign saw them branded in the media as the NRL’s worst defenders and plenty more.
Yet that match against the Knights, it was the day on which everything changed.
“A dark day,” is how Ciraldo remembers it now, before quickly adding how it also “magnified everything we needed to sort out”.
Kicked back this particular Thursday in a chair once held by the likes of Warren Ryan, Phil Gould, even the late, great Steve Folkes, Ciraldo is talking through what is quickly becoming the latest incarnation of famed Mark Antony phrase, The Dogs of War.
Especially when recalling how only nine months ago, Ciraldo’s debut coaching season finished with the Bulldogs languishing third last.
Conceding, on average, 32 points per game, Canterbury were labelled as 'the NRL’s worst defensive team'.
Daylight second.
All of which also came piled atop rumours of player unrest, Board unrest and many more negative headlines.
Yet now as we round the halfway point of 2024?
Well, Ciraldo’s side is not only shocking the critics, or sitting on par with the top eight, but defending with vigour.
A truth proved as recently as several days back when, against those same Knights who piled on 100 points in two games last year, Canterbury went and earned a huge away upset, 32-2.
A win which had one journalist quizzing Ciraldo afterwards on exactly where his defensive system has changed?
After all, when ‘Ciro’ arrived at Belmore in the pre-season of ‘23, he carried with him a famed defensive structure that had taken Penrith to three grand finals and consecutive NRL titles.
A system that, overnight however, and when coloured white and blue, would be challenged time and time again.
So again they asked after last week’s Friday Night Football upset, what’s changed?
“No change,” Ciraldo replied.
“It’s the exact same system we had when Newcastle pumped us twice last year.
“What’s changed is the culture.”
Spearheading this change, which Ciraldo, Gould and the Club's Executives have long said, has been a strong recruitment drive for 'true Bulldogs'.
Take, say, new centre Bronson Xerri who's story is well documented. Or, Jaemon Salmon, who was once publicly branded a “weak-gutted dog”.
Josh Curran? Well he missed two games last year, while signing Kurt Mann saw passionate fans fret critical claims of him being too old, 20kg light and along with other recruits like Connor Tracey, Blake Taaffe and Drew Hutchison as 'one of far too many utilities'.
Which is why rather than simply focusing on Ciraldo’s walls, we want to tell you about how his right leg aches on cold mornings.
Same as you need to know how his wonderful grandmother Vilda, never owned a car.
Which is how Ciraldo came to spend so many mornings as a young boy – aged three, maybe four – shadowing Nan through the streets of Belmore as, together, they headed for her next shift at Canterbury RSL.
A lollipop always jutting from one corner of his mouth too because, well, that wonderful lady who owned the corner store always had one waiting whenever they passed by.
“A conversion around every bend,” is how the coach remembers it.
And why every week now, his players are urged up into that same main drag of Belmore for breakfast, lunch, whatever, doesn’t matter, just communicate, connect, and learn to “look, think and act like a Bulldog”.
Same deal with Canterbury’s defence.
Indeed, only nine months after finishing his debut season with the worst defensive record of any NRL side, Ciraldo’s Bulldogs are suddenly tackling, scrambling, repelling their opponents and the coach says this is just the start of a journey.
Incredibly, and according to the Fox Sports Lab, the Dogs are conceding only 16 points, on average, per game – just one more than the reigning premiers – while also sitting equal first with the mountain when it comes to tries conceded (2.6).
“Total commitment to the system,” is how Ciraldo explains his side having not simply reduced the number of points they must chase per game, but halved them.
Same as when it comes to conceding more than 20 points per outing, the Bulldogs also have just five against their name – and again, are on track to halve their 19 from last year.
“But any defensive system will work when you have total commitment,” Ciraldo continues of the staggering turnaround.
“We just had to keep banking reps with people who were going to commit.”
Indeed, if you want to understand what really makes this bloke tick, go find the YouTube clip of him carting a ball for Newcastle in ‘09, against Cronulla.
Back when the then-backrower’s leg breaks so badly in four places, it will require surgery, plus a steel rod, and even today aches from time to time.
Here was an injury so bad that, afterwards, in the Shark Park sheds, the ankle alone took 15 minutes to reset.
Which didn’t so much destroy as define the career of this 39-year-old Sydneysider who, across nine years, saw him cut twice, average 10 games annually and continually punch from one 12-month deal to the next.
So you want to know why Ciraldo understands the value of hard conversations and harder work?
He spent an entire career living both.
Which is why last winter, even as the losses piled up, he kept faith in a system being questioned.
“Because,” he says, “on big stages and under pressure, I’d already seen it work.”
He just had to find the right team to administer it.
Which isn’t dissimilar to everything Brad Pitt epitomised when, in Moneyball, he played famed Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane.
Although forget ballplayers who get on base.
Ciraldo needed mobile men who tackle.
Or more specifically scramble, endure, and buy in exactly like, say, his ‘ol mate ‘Waltzing’ Matt Hilder.
Remember him?
Ciraldo certainly does.
Explaining how some 10 years since sharing a defensive line with the now Novocastrian plumber, he still remembers how comfortable it felt alongside a fella who gave far more than that greatest of nicknames.
Same as Ciraldo can still feel the confidence of defending alongside Chris Beattie at Cronulla.
Or the ache of an Ogre hit.
Which is why true Bulldogs Mark O’Meley, just like Big Willie, Josh Jackson, even Andrew ‘Bobcat’ Ryan, are all now found, at various times, inside this same HQ where Ciraldo has personally studied every player signed.
So if not getting on base, what’s the one thing uniting the likes of Xerri, Tracey, Curran and co.?
“The traits we required,” Ciraldo starts, “they were less tangible.
“We needed to find people who love footy and have a team first mentality.
“A lot of the guys we brought in were good players from successful clubs.
“Guys who already understood what winning looked like, they just needed an opportunity to play more games, or even more minutes.
“But the main trait we were looking for was men with strong character.
“Men who were willing to work hard, work together and trust in our process.”
Which is itself no easy task, and one that involved Ciraldo, before meeting with each player -- and often more than once -- making hundreds of calls to trusted confidantes who could take him far deeper than perception or back page headlines.
Which, you should know, saw some potential signings wind up with red lines through their names.
But still, coach got the men around whom, he insists, this yarn should be built.
Elsewhere, and already, it’s been noted how Ciraldo’s signing of smaller, more agile forwards – remember those headlines about too many utilities? – also lends to a theory of him playing ‘small ball’.
That NBA phenomenon where, in simplest terms, a coach sacrifices height for speed, agility, and, often, an increased propensity for scoring ‘threes’.
So what chance such thinking was behind his signings?
“Part of our recruitment was about availability, and what we want defensively,” the coach explains. “But yes, we’re after a fast-moving agile team and a guy like, say, Kurt Mann fits that.”
At which point Ciraldo stresses the Bulldogs' recruitment strategy won’t always resemble the model seen now, same as he also went to market for, and secured, a bone fide star in NSW Origin centre Stephen Crichton.
Still, while Canterbury now boast the likes of Matt Burton, Reed Mahoney, Viliame Kikau and Josh Addo-Carr, the story of 2024 is as much about a fella like Jacob Preston, last start, chasing, diving and impossibly pushing Knights winger Greg Marzhew into touch to save a try.
Preston's all effort try-saver
Quizzed on NRL defences generally and Ciraldo explains how having an entire team connected across the park, and moving in sync, isn’t only extremely difficult to create, but a dance that is easily lost.
“But when it works,” he says, “it’s beautiful”.
Which is why, every week, these Bulldogs are reminded how that beauty, it must be earned in the ugliest of ways.
“Which isn’t easy,” Ciraldo says.
Importantly, Ciraldo has his own strong background in Bulldogs DNA.
One born not only from Nan’s walks through the Belmore suburb she called home, or having a school-teaching dad also based in the area, but from being schooled himself in Moorebank – which meant playing on Belmore Oval by Year 3.
“And sitting alongside Darren Smith before my first game,” he says, smile broadening at the memory of a Bulldogs great all heart, headgear and almost 200 appearances for the Belmore club.
“And when that’s the first player you ever see live, it leaves a mark on you”.
Just as these Bulldogs are now looking to leave their own mark in 2024.
Asked the key to that connectivity now being displayed in Canterbury’s defence and Ciraldo replies: “First and foremost, it’s being totally committed to your system.
“Then, you also need good communicators.
“Guys who are willing to work hard for their teammates.
“And, no, it’s never perfect.
“But when you have guys willing to work hard, willing to save their mates... if they make a mistake, defence becomes beautiful to watch.”
Then after a pause, he continues: “But again, you have to earn it every week.
“Every game you have to turn up with that mentality, and that isn’t easy.”
Article originally published as 'How Ciraldo led Dogs back from ‘dark day’... and the motto ‘all over our walls’, courtesy of Nick Walsha and Fox Sports.
