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News ‘I tried to take my own life’: Inside the rise and demise of the Bulldogs

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‘I tried to take my own life’: Inside the rise and demise of the Bulldogs​

By Michael Chammas
MARCH 4, 2022




Des Hasler’s arrival at Belmore a decade ago set the club on a path to two grand finals. The pursuit of success led to a spectacular fall for the once proud club, which is only now starting to get back on its feet. In the first of a two-part Herald investigation, the key figures at the club finally reveal the explosive truth about the rise and demise - and rise again - of the Bulldogs.

Ben Barba stepped off the team bus at Belmore as the poster boy of rugby league. It was a Friday night in February, 2013, and the Bulldogs had just returned from a trial match against the Raiders in Goulburn ahead of the new NRL season.

By the time he had finished partying with the Epic Bender Crew two days later, he was the NRL’s most wanted for all the wrong reasons.

Todd Greenberg’s phone rang in the early hours of Sunday morning. The mother of Barba’s children, Ainslie Currie, was in a panic after a heated disagreement with her recently estranged partner inside their Caringbah apartment.
What Barba and Currie did not tell the Bulldogs, which was also missing from the NRL investigation, was that he had already tried.

“I haven’t told too many people this, but that day I tried to take my own life,” Barba revealed.

“That’s when Ainslie ran in and tried to stop me from strangling myself. I owe my life to her for reacting like that.”
Publicly, it was the first time Barba had stepped so far out of line.

But behind closed doors, in the summer of 2012 following his Dally M triumph on his way to leading Canterbury to a grand final, he spiralled out of control.

There were mornings Barba would wake up and not recognise the people in the home he had passed out in.

“My partner would ring me and ask, ‘Where are you?’” Barba tells the Herald during the lunch break of his job as a scaffolder. “I wouldn’t even know.”

“The temptations outside of footy were out of this world. I wasn’t ready to deal with that. The women, the parties, the drugs, the alcohol; everyone wanted to be around Benny Barba.

“From being almost not wanted in 2011, then being the star of the show in 2012 … the fame got to me. I was just on such a high that the repercussions of what I was doing never even crossed my mind.”
“We had a responsibility to try and save a life. Not just Ben’s - it implicated his partner and their children.”
- Des Hasler
In his first year in charge at the Bulldogs, Hasler transformed a player who, six months earlier, looked like he’d fail to overcome the “too small, can’t catch” tag he’d been stuck with.
Those who grew up in rugby league circles in Mackay in the ’90s witnessed Barba’s fear of authority from a young age.

“She said ‘Ben’s in trouble, he’s been out on an all-night bender and I’mJust like it did with his father Ken, whose whistling would reverberate around the local grounds on a Saturday morning grabbing the attention of young Ben, the authoritarian style of Hasler resonated with the fullback. worried he’s going to do something to himself’,” Greenberg recalled of the conversation with Currie.

“Benny was almost petrified of Des to the point where he was scared to let him down,” Greenberg said. “Ben had never trained that hard before in his life.”

And Hasler’s game plan, a revolutionary style played through a mobile, ball-playing forward pack, became the catalyst for one of the greatest individual seasons in rugby league history.

“That bloke, mate, I swear he was a genius,” Barba said. “He changed the game.”

“People were that worried about Benny, the people around him also had the best year of their careers,” Josh Reynolds added.

But just as quickly as the fullback united the team and the community, he ripped them apart.

There were signs - especially when it involved alcohol. There was the fight with teammate Jamal Idris in 2009.

In the pre-season of 2012, during a bonding trip to Kiama, Barba got into an argument with Josh Morris after players chipped him for prioritising the pokies over his teammates.

Prop James Graham, then in his second week at the club, then wrapped his arms around the pint-sized fullback, warning him of the consequences if he kept on provoking his teammates.

However, those incidents would soon pale into insignificance.

When Currie arrived at Belmore to meet Greenberg and Hasler the morning Barba tried to take his life, it became clear that there was more than a missing fullback to worry about.

According to sources with knowledge of the Tony Bannon report - the NRL-requested investigation which cleared Greenberg of negligence in his handling of the matter - the chief executive noticed a mark on Currie’s mouth after she walked into the room.

“I said, ’What’s happened here?” Greenberg recalled. “She said, ‘Nothing’s happened, don’t worry about me, I’m all good’.”

The report, which did not include an interview with Currie, claims that Greenberg thought it was domestic violence and that he encouraged her to go to the police to the point where she felt bullied and harassed.

After the Bulldogs doctor treated her for an injury that was allegedly inflicted while trying to stop Barba from taking his own life, the club organised for Currie to be driven to Bankstown Police Station to provide a statement.

However, at the 11th hour, after a third party informed her of the ramifications her intended actions may have on Barba’s contract and in turn the income for her family, Currie declined to participate.

“I was always accused of a cover-up,” Greenberg said. “But I stand by trying to provide support for Ainslie through the entire period. You have to remember the whole reason she rang me wasn’t because she felt in danger, it was because she was scared Ben was going to harm himself.”

Currie returned home to find Barba unconscious on the lounge. A few hours later she managed to convince him to head to Belmore to meet with the club.

Barba was shaking, unable to keep himself upright.

Hasler was no stranger to off-field incidents involving star players. He supported Brett Stewart when the Manly fullback was hit with sexual assault charges, of which he was later cleared, in 2010.

He believed that through the discipline and structure of the football department, he could help Barba and his family through the ordeal without sending him off to rehab.

“Someone had to take responsibility,” Hasler said of Barba, who had been chosen to launch the NRL season in a week’s time.

“It didn’t matter who it was, we had a responsibility to try and save a life. Not just Ben’s - it implicated his partner and their children. It’s easy in hindsight to say all this, but at the time I felt we as a club could help him as a human being. Someone had to intervene and help.”

“Someone had to initiate that and I thought we as a club could do that through what we had in the football department. Part of our role was to help rehabilitate him to help him make better decisions around what is right and wrong.”

Club bosses, however, ignored Hasler’s request and booked Barba into the South Pacific Private rehabilitation facility in Curl Curl the next day and called an urgent meeting with his teammates.

“Alcohol was all I knew in how to deal with problems,” Barba said.

“There was so much pressure. My relationship was breaking down. We’d split up for the first time. I was masking it and didn’t want to show any emotion.”

When he returned a month later, his teammates were furious. Perhaps more to the point, the wives and girlfriends of the players were furious.

“You could see that it was ripping the team apart.”
- Josh Reynolds
They didn’t want their partners around him, nor did they want their partners playing at a club that wouldn’t sack him.

“What if this was Shane Pumipi?,” one player said in the team meeting with club bosses in reference to one of the club’s fringe first graders. “He’d be gone.”

The ones closest to him, like Frank Pritchard and Sam Kasiano, turned on Barba the most.

“I let them down and things weren’t the same any more,” Barba said.

“It didn’t feel like I was connected. Things were just different and it kept getting worse.”

Reynolds, who would often share a car with Barba to training, struggled to work out what was right and wrong.

“I find it hard to turn my back on people because I know what it feels like to go through shit alone,” Reynolds said.

“It was hard for me because I was so close to him before it all happened. I played 20’s with him. We hung out at the Bulldogs house together. But you could see that it was ripping the team apart.”

Currie turned up to matches oblivious to the elephant that only left the room upon Barba’s release to the Broncos the following year. For Canterbury it marked the dawn of a new era. For Barba, the demons remained.

“Sometimes I just sit back now and wish I never played rugby league.”

before Ben Barba started to implode, things had been looking bright for Canterbury. In 2011, CEO Todd Greenberg had pulled off a stunning coup, luring Manly’s premiership-winning coach Des Hasler to Belmore.

In accordance with the schedule he had been asked to adhere to, Greenberg arrived at the northern beaches home of prominent player agent George Mimis 30 minutes after Hasler entered the premises.

“He came early, I came late,” Greenberg recalled of the secret negotiations to lure Hasler to the Bulldogs in 2011. “Same thing happened at the end of the meeting. I left early, he left late.”

Hasler was paranoid. He believed his Sea Eagles were on the cusp of another premiership.

“Anything that stops us winning it, I’ll walk away and there’ll be no chance of it happening,” Hasler told Greenberg a month out from the finals. “You have a club that leaks like a sieve,” Mimis added.
The Bulldogs had just ended a 22-year reign of coaches with family ties to legendary administrator Peter ‘Bullfrog’ Moore, parting ways with his son, Kevin.
 
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The romance of the ‘family club’ was dwindling. Performances were dropping. Training schedules revolved around tee times on the golf course.

"This notion of doing things "the Bulldog way" was born in the 80's," Greenberg said. "We had to leave that behind."

A few months earlier, Wayne Bennett, still coaching St George Illawarra at the time, had agreed to a multi-million dollar deal to join Nathan Tinkler at Newcastle the following year.

Greenberg, though, with the assistance of Michael Ennis, arranged to meet with him in Wollongong. “I honestly just wanted his advice,” Greenberg recalled.

“At the end of the meeting, he said, ’The answer is staring at you square in the face and you’re not doing anything about it.

"He said: 'Des Hasler is probably the best coach in your era, so why don’t you go tap on his door. I know he’s very unhappy at Manly and I know they take advantage of him down there'."

The Bulldogs wanted a disciplinarian. They wanted someone who didn’t care for being the players’ friend, yet still got the players to fight for him like he was family.

"I wanted the players to fear the coach. That's the sort of evolution we needed," Greenberg said.

Hasler’s signature, if secured, was going to put a significant dent in the club’s bank account.

The sports science program he wanted to implement was going to revolutionise rugby league. He also wanted some of his staff to come with him.

Hasler’s final request was for the club to convince captain Andrew Ryan not to retire - but the conversation ended before it began.

Given Hasler’s demand for negotiations to remain private, a contract sat in the top drawer of Greenberg’s office until a board meeting was called the morning after Manly’s grand final triumph against Melbourne.

Only football club chairman Ray Dib and Leagues Club chairman George Peponis had knowledge of the bombshell Greenberg was about to drop.

”A few of them laughed and said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good one’,” Greenberg said of the reaction from certain directors to signing the recently crowned dual premiership winner.

A few months before Manly’s triumph, a board member from one side of the warring factions, approached Hasler and suggested his time was up despite a mutual option in his contract for 2012.
Then, on the eve of the finals, a separate senior Manly official also approached Mimis and urged the agent to explore the market for any interest in the coach.

By the time the club had a change of heart, after the coach delivered them a premiership, it was too late. Hasler had agreed to coach the Bulldogs in 2013.

"We thought they’d fold," Greenberg said.

"I couldn’t imagine Manly would be happy for him to stay for one year when he had his eyes on the prize at our place in '13."

Sea Eagles owner Scott Penn then called a meeting with Dib at a Putney cafe in the hope of securing a financial pay-out in exchange for the early release of the coach. Dib wouldn’t budge.

“We told him that we were happy to wait for 2013,” Dib said. “He also wanted assurances that we wouldn’t encourage Kieran Foran to break his contract. At the time we weren’t interested in Kieran, so we agreed. They didn’t get a cent from us. They just let him go.”

Jim Dymock, who led Canterbury to five wins from the final eight games of the season as caretaker coach in 2011, had already mapped out the club’s pre-season schedule.

He based it on what he understood was the way to run a high-performance program from his time under Kevin Moore.

“Are you f------ sure you guys are ready for me?” Hasler asked Greenberg after viewing what he originally thought was the team’s NSW Cup training schedule.

The team, which was oozing with talent thanks to the recruitment of the late Peter Mulholland - had no idea what they were about to embark on.

”I remember seeing a few of the boys’ faces,” halfback Trent Hodkinson, who had previously worked with Hasler at Manly, said. “They were just broken sitting in the sheds afterwards.“

The club got what they asked for. The players feared the coach.

"He was the principal of the school," Josh Reynolds says. "You can have a few relationships with some of your teachers and muck around, but when it comes to the principal you don’t.

"You were so nervous to do anything wrong or drop the ball at training. But that’s how Des wanted us to be. There was this aura about him."

Hasler, in particular, targeted the big men. Sam Kasiano, Greg Eastwood and Frank Pritchard felt the wrath of the coach’s determination to transform a semi-professional group of football players into an elite sporting team.

“That Greg Eastwood is a talent - silky hands, incredible feet … but I’m going to f------ break him over the next month and I’m going to hurt him to the point something is going to give,” Greenberg recalled of a conversation with Hasler.

“But when we rebuild him, it will be the making of him - just watch and see.”

And that’s exactly what happened when Eastwood, who went on to produce the best year of his career, tore his hamstring a few weeks later.

“I have to admit when I first met Des I thought he was the mad professor,” Peponis said.

His obsession with statistics and data was evident in the slideshow he presented to a confused Dane Gagai while trying to sign the outside back inside the Qantas Club at Brisbane airport.

"The mad scientist thing ... that is something that people who don’t get him would say," the club’s former head of mind management and Hasler’s confidant John Novak said.

"If you get to know him like I have the last 12 years, there’s nothing mad about him. He’s a deep, deep thinker. He’s just a logical, reasoned, scientific-based person."

The battering wasn’t just physical, either.

The players were inundated with video clips uploaded to their newly purchased iPads to ensure they were the best prepared football team in the competition.

"If I was coming up against Wade Graham, I knew what he had for breakfast that morning - that's how much information they would give you," Reynolds said.

Whatever the coach did worked. The Bulldogs went on a 12-game wining streak, culminating in an appearance in the grand final against the Melbourne Storm.

"Everyone was working in that symbiosis of feeling and trusting and being and believing," Novak said.

"The essence of the message was to develop this culture of positivity. That became the mantra. Positivity was our way. It was special."
 
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Downing a couple of beers on the front balcony of Peponis’ Hunters Hill home a few months after he was embroiled in the Barba scandal, Greenberg informed the Leagues Club chairman of an offer he had received from then NRL boss Dave Smith to become the game’s head of football.

Dib, having heard whispers of the governing body circling his CEO, upgraded and extended Greenberg’s contract a few months earlier on the proviso he signed a clause that prohibited him from leaving to join the NRL.

"Hence why I went to George first," Greenberg joked.

Peponis was supportive and gave Greenberg his blessing. “I’ll call Ray over now and we’ll talk,” Peponis told him. “He will be fine, mate.”

“Todd was so disappointed in Sonny Bill Williams ... then he goes and does the same thing.”
- Ray Dib
Dib was anything but. “When I told Ray he said: ‘f--- you, I’m going to sue your arse, you can’t f----- leave’,” Greenberg recalled.

Dib was furious. "What upset me the most was the double standards," Dib said.

"Todd was so disappointed in Sonny Bill Williams for walking out on his contract with the club, then he goes and does the same thing. What’s different?"
The Herald can reveal Dib then struck a landmark deal with the NRL at the time of Greenberg’s departure, with head office forking out an unprecedented $150,000 in compensation to the club, as well paying a fee to replace the CEO’s personal assistant.

Greenberg’s departure opened the door for Raelene Castle to enter the fray as the first female NRL club chief executive, joining the Bulldogs from Netball New Zealand.

"They went through an interview process that had 4000 applicants and I ended up at the top of that process," Castle said.

"That’s the greatest thing they did for me because that was a genuine process. There wasn’t any sense of it being tokenism because I’m a female."

"They weren’t that far out of a salary cap drama and a rape scandal, which was still certainly the front of mind for people when I first got involved."
Castle quickly found out just how hands-on Dib could be when he injected himself into negotiations with the Brisbane Broncos, who had informed Castle they were only willing to fork out a $40,000 transfer fee for Barba’s release in 2014.

Dib and Castle then flew to Brisbane to meet at the home of then Broncos chief executive Paul White, extracting another $160,000 from the club before agreeing to release the fullback.

As Dib’s stocks rose, so too did his bond with the game’s most powerful figure, Roosters supremo Nick Politis.

“Ray was good for the game,” Politis told the Herald. “He had the Bulldogs’ best interests at heart. I have a lot of respect for him.”

Dib, alongside director Arthur Coorey, secured $10m of government funding to transform a dilapidated Belmore into the best high performance centre in rugby league.

The sponsors were at a record high. The third party deals were rolling in.

They became the most watched team on television, even though the relationship with the game’s free-to-air broadcaster hit a hurdle when Nine News reporter Jayne Azzopardi was abused by player Joel Romelo from the window of the club’s Belmore headquarters during Mad Monday celebrations in 2012.

"Hey Todd, I love the way you support your organisation," former Nine chief executive David Gyngell told Greenberg after the Bulldogs called a meeting with the network to raise concerns about their decision to film into Canterbury’s training facility from a nearby park.
"But don’t come in here and tell me how to do my job. We make the f----- news. We choose what f----- goes on our news. And when we want to put something on the news, we'll f----- put it on the news. But thanks for coming in."

The sleeping giants of the NRL had been awoken. But after failing to win their second grand final in three years against South Sydney in 2014, the pursuit of success set the club’s most influential figures on a collision course that is still being felt more than half a decade later.

A breakdown in trust marked the beginning of the end. Dib found out that Hasler had “gone rogue” and offered Tim Browne an extra $100,000 on top of his agreed salary without the authority or knowledge of the recruitment and retention committee, which Dib chaired.

He also believed Castle protected Hasler and tried to hide it from the board, with the club later self-reporting to the NRL that it had breached the salary cap by $82,000 in 2016.


Castle has denied keeping it from the board, while Hasler has no recollection of the incident occurring. Dib, however still reflects on that moment as a turning point at the club, with trust eroding between the board and senior management.

"I trusted the wrong people in the inner sanctum and when they betrayed my trust I did what needed to be done in the best interest of the club," Dib said.

"I respected everyone, but I wasn’t there to please people and agree to do things for the wrong reasons."

Dib, who at the time was unwilling to extend the coach's deal, also believed that Hasler had approached Moses Mbye during contract negotiations to encourage him to include a coaching clause in his new deal.

As Dib grew frustrated with the coach, Hasler insists he never shared any bad blood towards the chairman. It was reflected in a gift he provided the chairman just a few months out from his sacking, handing Dib a decade old pair of Doc Martens that he superstitiously wore every game day.

“Yeah, but did he tell you that he came back and asked for them back a few weeks later?,” Dib said.

“I told him I threw them out.”

The Bulldogs had become a political hotbed. The coach believed he was being undermined by his chairman.

“What I think contributed to the situation was the pressure on Ray trying to win the imminent board election.”
- George Mimis
The chairman believed his chief executive was too close to the coach. And the players believed they were about to be caught in the crossfires.

“It got a bit nasty,” Josh Morris recalled.

“The players just want to be left alone to train and play. They don’t want to be dragged into that stuff.”

At the end of 2016 Dib began to pick apart Hasler’s support staff after questioning recruitment manager Noel Cleal’s contribution to the organisation and the value of the coach’s entourage of henchmen.

Dib stripped Hasler of his power. The attack on Cleal, described by some as Hasler’s safety blanket, disappointed the coach.

“Des’ methodology had made the finals every year, plus two grand finals,” Mimis said. “He can only get results and the results were fine.”

Dib and the board then began manoeuvring to overhaul a roster that he believed was underperforming and too loyal to Hasler to share their concerns about the coach’s influence on the team.

“There was no toxicity. If there was, then I wouldn’t have been there,” Hasler said.

“What I think contributed to the situation was the pressure on Ray trying to win the imminent board election,” Mimis added.

Dib, in a move that would have almost guaranteed his survival if executed in its entirety - organised for Aaron Woods and James Tedesco to meet at Belmore Sportsground for a late night secret tour of the club’s headquarters.

There were two Bulldogs jerseys hanging from the ceiling. One with “Woods” on the back. The other, “Tedesco”.

Mitchell Moses wasn’t there that night, but the intention was that in the coming weeks all three would sign on the dotted line.

But Hasler wouldn’t commit to Moses because he had privately convinced Foran to join the club.

At the time, Hasler couldn’t breach Foran’s confidence and the unknown around the halfback cost the Bulldogs any chance of Tedesco’s signature, as the star fullback wanted to know who’d be calling the shots.

The constant speculation took a toll on the club’s incumbents, who refused to air grievances about the coach when approached by the chairman.

“Des had worn them out. He was fantastic for us as a club, but there was a use by date.”
- Ray Dib
By the end of Hasler’s reign, one player would even ask his child to watch the videos that had been uploaded on to his iPad knowing Hasler would receive a notification when it had been viewed.

“We were relying on Raelene to relay the mood in the dressing room towards Des,” Dib said.

“Player managers were coming to me saying they’re unhappy, but when you asked the players they didn’t say the same thing. Des had worn them out. He was fantastic for us as a club, but there was a use by date. The players and staff were too scared to approach him, and the ones that stood up to him were moved on.”

The sad demise of Kris Keating, the whole-hearted half who wore the No.7 in the 2012 grand final, has never been spoken about.

Keating slipped into deep depression and was admitted to St John of God Hospital three times during his time at the Bulldogs as he struggled to cope with the expectations.

“I’m not going to put Des down, because he’s a great coach who really looked after me a lot,” Keating told the Herald.

“But I couldn’t handle the intensity. From the moment you went into that door at Belmore it was footy, footy, footy. You couldn’t even go home and unwind because you had to watch the replays on the iPads and get back to them before the morning.

“You were forever with just footy on your mind 24-7 and I lost that passion. I had to get away from it. I reached a cracking point and had to get out of there. I ended up losing my marbles.”

Josh Morris insists he never had an issue with the program but noticed the enthusiasm of his teammates diminish over time.

“A leopard never changes his spots.”
Ray Dib’s text to Scott Penn
“I could sense a few players got over his training methods,” Morris said of the coach. “But I’ve always worked hard. It didn’t bother me too much, but you could sense it among players that they were close to the end with him.”

Dib’s belief in the coach diminished significantly after handing him a two-year extension following the 2014 grand final.

The words of Manly owner Scott Penn from the day he agreed to release Hasler to the Bulldogs back in 2011 began echoing in Dib’s mind.

“You might regret this, Ray, because a leopard never changes his spots,” Dib recalled of the conversation with Penn.

“He said to me: ‘Be careful what you wish for’.

It’s the same message Dib sent Penn when he took Hasler back in 2020.

“A leopard never changes his spots,” he wrote.

Read Part 2 in tomorrow’s Herald, which includes the controversy around Des Hasler’s sacking, the uprising that led to Dib’s demise and details of the revolution the Bulldogs hope will lead them back to finals football.

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/i-...d-demise-of-the-bulldogs-20220215-p59wpd.html
 
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Wow .. it's a long article, but a very indepth one.

Talk about shit going on behind closed doors. It's a wonder we could function as a club week to week with everything going on.

Sad read about Barba. He could have been a future immortal if he continued on his trajectory, but instead destroyed his legacy as fast as he built it.

Look forward to reading the second part of it... very very interesting read.
 

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Honestly I can’t be fucked reading all that 😂 can someone explain it in a short sentence 😂
 

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I just hope this article doesn’t praise des.
 
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Honestly I can’t be fucked reading all that 😂 can someone explain it in a short sentence 😂
The summary would be as long as the article.

Covers a heap of stuff that (as a supporter) you never knew was going on behind the scenes of the club. Kinda explains why on field we were okay, but boardroom and behind the scenes things were an absolute mess.

Des doesn't come off too good in it, nor Dib, Castle, or even Greenberg to a degree.
 

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It's sad how Barba is viewed now I mean yeah he's done a lot of dumb shit and I'm certainly not defending it, but I don't think many would argue that the bloke has some serious mental issues. Hopefully for his sake he is in a better place now.

I reckon Kris Keating was a better player than what some people credit him for.. he always had a go and had a decent skill set.
 

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The summary would be as long as the article.

Covers a heap of stuff that (as a supporter) you never knew was going on behind the scenes of the club. Kinda explains why on field we were okay, but boardroom and behind the scenes things were an absolute mess.

Des doesn't come off too good in it, nor Dib, Castle, or even Greenberg to a degree.
Fuck des and the cunt he came from.
The fraud fucked our club and is still employed by the womanly.
 
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It's sad how Barba is viewed now I mean yeah he's done a lot of dumb shit and I'm certainly not defending it, but I don't think many would argue that the bloke has some serious mental issues. Hopefully for his sake he is in a better place now.

I reckon Kris Keating was a better player than what some people credit him for.. he always had a go and had a decent skill set.
If he stayed on the rails he could easily have been up there with Tedesco as on of the best. He just had raw talent and speed.
 

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If he stayed on the rails he could easily have been up there with Tedesco as on of the best. He just had raw talent and speed.

Yep. He was a fair defender too and that improved at the Sharks. 2012 will always be one of the best seasons by an individual though.
 
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Yep. He was a fair defender too and that improved at the Sharks. 2012 will always be one of the best seasons by an individual though.
I've never seen one player score so many long range tries in a season. He was near untouchable in 2012.
 

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I've never seen one player score so many long range tries in a season. He was near untouchable in 2012.

His ability to weave around defenders was insane. Such great natural instinct. It's a darn shame how things ended up for that squad because it was only a side built on cheating that stopped them from winning the premiership.
 

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If the truth about Ben's situation was released to the pubic at the time, I dare say the perception of him would of been different both publicly and within his inner sanctum, with the later offering more support to help him back on track.
Des and the board needed to find a compromise.
They had to seek treatment for him as an employer out of duty of care, the ongoing support after that is where Des needed to step up.
Des also sounds like a chill pill or two would of resolved a LOT of his issues.
Another that will not realise his potential due to lack of strong level heads to mentor and guide him.
If Gus was there at the time, I suspect things then and now would be significantly different for all, positive for most.
 
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