Canterbury coach Cameron Ciraldo has delivered a blunt assessment of the Bulldogs’ 32-12 loss to the Roosters at Allianz Stadium and indicated changes are on the way.
While satisfied with his side’s start to the heavyweight clash, Ciraldo lamented their inability to match the Roosters for the full 80 minutes.
“I thought we were ready to come here and put in a really good performance on the back of last week (against the Warriors),” he said.
“But when the intensity went up, a few of our guys didn’t want to go with it.”
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“Penalties and errors gave the Roosters field position—we just couldn’t match them,” he continued.
‘Not happy, the last month has been disappointing’
The Bulldogs have now lost two of their past three NRL matches and the head coach made it clear he isn’t happy.
“In our last four games we’ve had two of our best performances and two of our worst performances of the season,” Ciraldo acknowledged.
“Not happy about that, you can’t be that team, the last month has been disappointing.”
Ciraldo then suggested the Bulldogs starting 17 could look different for next Friday’s Round 25 blockbuster with the Melbourne Storm.
“I blame myself there, some of the guys carrying niggles, they just get through training, rather than actually ‘training’. I’m going to stop that, if you can’t train it results in a performance like that,” he said.
“We’ve got a deep squad, we have a lot of good players who didn’t play tonight, if we don’t want to prepare to win I’ll put someone in who does.”