This is something we need to sit down and discuss now.
With Ben Barba looking to leave the Bulldogs and head back to Queensland, we have now got to a point where a number of key players the club has invested time and money into have somehow found ways to leave the club.
Sonny Bill Williams signed a long term deal with the Bulldogs only to jump on a plane in the middle of the night. Braith Anasta, Willie Mason, Nate Myles, all great players that left. Ben Hannant, another player that wanted to leave the club early. Then there was Johnathan Thurston who left the club as well.
This is a heartbreaking list of players! Some teams have players they can point to and wish somehow, some way they were able to hold onto them. For the Panthers, we really should never have lost Brad Fittler. The Bulldogs though, over the last ten years they have lost some of the best players in the game to other clubs!
When the club made the Grand Final last season, they did well, only for a crazed Pom to run over and bite Billy Slater as the team lost the game!
If you had to look back and find a turning point, a moment in which the Rugby League Gods got pissed off at the clubs and put them through this endless misery, it would have to be their massive salary cap breach in 2002.
The club did go on to win the 2004 Grand Final though, so its hard to suggest that things have been downhill since 2002.
It is clear that we need to find a way to break this curse. A goat needs to be sacrificed in the middle of ANZ Stadium or something to turn this around.
Every time you think things are going well for the Bulldogs, the curse strikes!!!
So how would you break this curse? Leave a comment below. Lets see what fans come up with!
add solomon haumono to that list
I forgot all about him! More fuel to the fire! The curse is real!!!
Perhaps it’s deserved They obviously don’t treat their players well, No animal needs to be sacrificed Karma works its magic in it’s own ways HA!!!
There is no curse, if you want a cursed team just look to Parramatta and the guys they have produced who never made first grade, but are gun players.
It just happens when a team has lots of depth, they may have to let an experienced performer go and hope they can replace it with guys coming through. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Nate Myles was a bench player for the Bulldogs at the time the Roosters signed him.
Braith Anasta we couldn’t match the money as we were still being penalised by the salary cap breach at that time.
Willie Mason wasn’t half the player he had been when he left to the Roosters.
Thurston was unfortunately not a Steve Folkes type player, even though most of us knew he would be great. Not to mention his homesickness which is what was the biggest issue overall.
The whole Ben Barba situation currently being played out is only due to him wanted to be near his kids. If his missus stays in Sydney, so does Barba.
Hannat was similar to Thurston, he wanted the laid back lifestyle that Queensland offers.
I have no problem with players moving on, it happens at all clubs, and I am sure you could write similar articles for every club.