Six out of eight: Why Cameron Ciraldo’s referee rants aren’t helping diabolical Dogs

The Canterbury Bulldogs are not having a good season.

That is not going to come as a surprise to anyone, but after coach Cameron Ciraldo's latest whinge about the referees in the press conference after the club's eighth defeat to the Wests Tigers on Saturday, it marks the sixth time the under pressure coach has, in some way, blamed the refereeing this season.

That's six out of eight defeats.

In fairness to Ciraldo, he has acknowledged his side's deficiencies in each one of those press conferences, but to have six separate games where he has taken exception with the referee goes beyond taking the heat off your players.

It shows a far, far deeper issue running through the Belmore-based club.

Stop and think for a minute. Do you ever hear Wayne Bennett, Craig Bellamy, Ivan Cleary or Michael Maguire drone on about the referees week after week, rather than taking responsibility for their playing group, preparation and ultimately, their team's performance?

There is a saying that if you're blaming everyone else, eventually, you're going to have to put your hand up and realise you are the problem.

Ciraldo is at that mark now, and the stats have often shown he should have won games where he has whinged.

The first complaint was back in Round 4, when Canterbury came up short against the Knights.

The 24-16 loss saw a horror first half for the Bulldogs, with their attack faltering, but Ciraldo thought it was a sin bin - giving his team a man advantage - and "soft decisions" which hurt his team the most, not their complete inability to find points.

"Not sure about out-muscled. I thought we started quite well, Newcastle were brave to get a couple of stops and try-savers, and then when they got their chance, they executed and got points straight away. Maybe we just lost our way a bit after that," Ciraldo said when asked to summarise the club's first loss of the season.

"They had a guy in the sin bin and then they got ahead on the scoreboard, and maybe that played into our mindset a little bit, but there was definitely some soft decisions in the 20 minutes before halftime, and then Newcastle were able to bank a lot of possession in that time.

"I thought we were brave for long periods defending, but again, some soft decisions under fatigue and that's why we went into halftime trailing."

Early in the game, Canterbury had all the running, and even by fulltime, they had 51 per cent of the ball, but only managed to score three tries, with all of them coming after Stephen Crichton shuffled to five-eighth.

Meanwhile, their lack of resilience in defence was clear to see, the Knights scoring two tries in a six-minute period before halftime, and two more in a nine-minute period heading into the final 20 minutes of the contest.

Fast forward to Round 5 on Good Friday against the South Sydney Rabbitohs, and the Bulldogs again had a lot of early ball, taking the lead into halftime.

When asked what went wrong, Ciraldo claimed it was the second half, but the penalties, rather than his own side's performance.

"Probably the second half," Ciraldo said when asked where it went wrong.

"I thought we were good in the first half, whethered a storm early and then got our game on in the second 20-minute period. I thought our bench were outstanding when they came on, really changed the momentum of the game.

"Thought we started the second half really strong, and then just penalties against us cruelled us in the second half. You can't give a good team like South Sydney that much possession and field position, and we paid the price for that."

He didn't outright say all the penalties were wrong, but didn't exactly agree with the decisions made by referee Todd Smith.

"Look, I'm going to have to have a look at them, I'm not sure how many of them [the penalties] we could control. The fact you're asking me whether they are contentious probably means they are, but I don't know. The reality is we got penalised six or seven times in the second half, they completed 24 sets straight, and we had no possession, no field position and we had fatigue errors on the back of that," he added.

And yes, the Rabbitohs won the penalty count quite enormously on Good Friday, 8-2 as it turned out, but the fact Canterbury completed at just 61 per cent and again, at times, looked a rabble with the football in hand, doesn't all come from that penalty count.

Possession was 52-48, so it's not as if the Bulldogs spent the whole game camped on their own line, and certainly during the first half, they had more opportunities to put points on than the three they managed.

Canterbury then managed to beat the Panthers in a real surprise by that point, before putting in maybe their worst effort of the campaign against the Eels, for which Ciraldo could find no excuse.

By Round 8 though, he was back at the referees, this time wanting clarity on escorts after Harry Hayes was sin binned in the 28th minute, with Brisbane going on to score twice during that ten-minute period.

"Probably got to get clarity on it. I saw a lot of escorts tonight, two we were penalised for and a couple we didn't get go our way, so I just have to get clarity on what they are seeing for that to happen, and for us not to get them on the other end. I'll do that during the week," Ciraldo said of Hayes' sin bin for an escort during the loss to Brisbane.

What that comment doesn't tell you though, is that the Bulldogs were their own worst enemy. They won possession, but only completed at 72 per cent. It was another lost penalty count for the blue and white, although they certainly won the six-again count, but there is little doubt they should have scored well before the 55th minute, and probably should have stopped more tries than they did too.

Maybe the six-again count was playing on the mind heading into Round 9 against the North Queensland Cowboys, because that's exactly where Ciraldo voiced his anger after a loss to the North Queensland Cowboys, claiming they actually don't help attacking teams in the red zone.

"Obviously we are a bit down on confidence with our attack at the moment and that happens at different times. There is a lot of commentary about that, and we need to make sure to the voices within our four walls and not everyone else," Ciraldo said after a horrendous attacking performance.

"But clearly the Cowboys tonight were really going to test the ref on that tryline area, they really tested the ruck control and line speed there, they were up in our faces. There were a number of six-agains, but that doesn't help you at times as well. It sort of suffocates you as well.

"I thought we were patient down there, we weren't trying to throw stuff that wasn't there, but we needed to be better when we got our chances."

And yes, he might have a point, but the Bulldogs also won the penalty count 6-3, as well as the set restarts 6-2. They camped on the Cowboys' line for much of the first half. In fact, the Cowboys only had one set in the first seven minutes before Lachlan Galvin finally broke through for a try.

The thing is, it doesn't matter how close you are to the line, when you have periods of 20-odd straight tackles, tries should be inevitable.

Certainly, they are for good attacking teams. That, in a nutshell, is why points and margins are up as far as they are this year, and yet Ciraldo, looking for excuses to cover up the fact his side have the third-worst attacking record in the competition, only ahead of the Titans and Dragons, found a way to blame them.

After that, it was more failed attack, and weak defence from the Bulldogs. They didn't score again until the 52nd minute, which actually kept the game locked up at 12-all, before the blue and white let in three late tries to slump to yet another defeat.

The Bulldogs then went to Brisbane and were thumped by the Dolphins, conceding 44 points in the week leading up to Magic Round.

Despite the size of the margin, and his side's ineptitude at both ends of the park, which, again, he did acknowledge, he indicated his side were being essentially what would be referred to by the average punter as refereed out of games.

"That's a tough one to answer, because all the games have been a little bit different," Ciraldo said when asked what had gone wrong since the win over the Panthers.

"Discipline is hurting us. I think there are things we can control, but I think, I watch the game and I don't see us being that much more ill-disciplined than the opposition and sometimes I can't understand where those penalties come from. There are ones where we are just an easy target at the moment.

"Every time we have a chance to apply pressure and are playing that field position game, we don't get rewarded for it. Someone lays down and holds their neck or whatever, we are defending our tryline again.

"From the 30-minute mark to the 70-minute mark, we gave them 75 per cent possession. It was a 6-2 penalty count in there and 5-0 restarts, they scored six tries, it just killed us. A lot of it was self-inflicted, but there will be some questions I'm asking about a bit of it as well."

Ciraldo, not for the first time in 2026, or indeed the same night's press conference, labelled his side an 'easy target' yet again, and said they were getting 'hammered' by penalties.

"I'm not watching the game thinking we are so ill-disciplined here, and we continually get hammered by penalties. I need to get clarification on why we are the most penalised side, especially inside 20. They are massive momentum swinging penalties. The guys work so hard to get that position, and then a bloke goes down and grabs his neck or there is a little offside penalty when the opposition has been offside a number of times," he said.

"They are the things we just aren't getting at the moment, and again, there is a part we need to control, but I feel like we are an easy target."

Despite his comments on the six-again from the week before, apparently losing that count as heavily as they did was a big part of the reason for conceding so many points against the, by then, turning a corner Dolphins.

More than that though, the penalty count they actually won 10-8, and the blue and white scored two of the first three tries before dropping their bundle at both ends of the park.

Traditionally, a team that dominates a game with field position and possession is going to win the penalty count, so the fact the Dolphins were able to weather an early storm, get on top and then make the Bulldogs pay for again what was a very, very low completion rate at just 75 per cent, tells you pretty much all you need to know.

Ciraldo gave the referees a week off after Magic Round, and then picked up a win over the under-strength Melbourne Storm in Round 12, but was straight back onto it for his sixth direct mention of the referees this season after a loss to the Wests Tigers at CommBank Stadium over the weekend.

There is no doubt the decision to penalise Josh Curran wouldn't have been so five years ago, but we live in a different world now. In fairness, Ciraldo said he would "cop" the decision if that's now the way things are going, while he had a bigger issue with a decision on a try up the other end.

"No, no I'm not, not at all. But, we will send another email in this week and get something written back. The Josh Curran one, maybe the charge down is gone, his foot did touch him, but Josh charged the ball down first and then Jarome's foot hit him. If that's the way it is, I'll cop that, but Jarome didn't think it was a penalty because he turned around and chased," Ciraldo said when asked if he was happy with the refereeing decisions.

"The more disappointing one was to go down the other end, someone is offside, takes out our fullback and that's a try. What's worse? Someone touching your foot or someone taking our your fullback?

"I don't know.

"Then there are the other tries. They look like they are held up but it's a try, Critta gets over the line, looks very similar to that but it's a no try.

"Strips, Galvin gets the ball clearly stripped right in front of the referee, no penalty, Stephen throws a guy down on the ground, ball comes out and it's a penalty."

Ciraldo was then directly asked whether the Bulldogs were not getting the "rub of the green" in 2026, and he suggested every coach feels aggrieved.

"I think every coach feels like that [that they aren't getting the rub of the green]. We all feel like that, we all feel aggrieved," he said when asked.

"What I do know is that I have a very tough football team, physically tough with what they are going through right now. The mental toughness too. When those decisions that you're talking about that go against us time after time after time, our guys just get on with their job and keep playing tough."

Unsurprisingly, when the Bulldogs had the rub of the green, as it was so called on Saturday evening, during their first two games of the season, Ciraldo didn't want to comment on the refereeing performances.

What is clear is that his coaching, his tactics, and his recruitment and retention have driven the Bulldogs to the wrong end of the ladder after a top-four finish last year, not the referees, and there must come a point when it is no longer the referees fault.

But the issue goes far deeper than that.

Far deeper than just the impact of his club.

Over the weekend, there was a story published around the drop off in referees for grassroots football.

Refereeing quality might be a bugbear of fans and coaches alike, but none have the track record of whinging about them like Ciraldo does.

There is a real headache facing the game where, if there isn't a far more positive outlook on referees from those at the top of the sport - the role models if you will - quality will continue to drop because there just won't be the talent pool of them coming through the ranks.

It's not only time for the NRL to act, but it's also time for Ciraldo to realise complaining about the state of the refereeing decisions supposedly going against his club each week is doing nothing for his playing group, and nothing for the club.

It makes Canterbury look like they simply can't accept the circumstances in front of them, through their own retention and recruitment decisions.

The season is slipping away fast for the blue and white, and it's time for Ciraldo to look inside his own four walls and his misfiring group of players, rather than the competition's whistle-blowers.