NRL 2025: Cameron Ciraldo ignores criticism of Lachlan Galvin's role

The Australian

4 hours ago

Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo says his plans for Lachlan Galvin won't be influenced by the same people who criticised the club's recruitment strategy as he prepares to avenge his side's heavy loss to Brisbane earlier in the season.
Galvin is just three games into his Bulldogs career after he made the mid-season switch from the Wests Tigers, with the young playmaker winning his first two matches before tasting defeat in an instant classic against Penrith last week.
The former Tiger has started one match and has come off the bench in the other two games, with plenty of outside noise that Ciraldo should move him into the halves now and drop Toby Sexton to work on combinations ahead of the finals.
Cameron Ciraldo won't let outside noise influence his plans for Lachlan Galvin. Picture:'I don't see a whole lot of it. I am told about it at different times, but internally we all understand what we're trying to do here,' Ciraldo said ahead of Friday's showdown with the Broncos where Galvin has again been named on the bench.
'We're all on the same page and I've got a number of good people around me whose opinions I trust inside our four walls, and we'll continue to do that.
'It's probably the same voices who are doubting what we did now who doubted our recruitment strategy, doubted our forward pack and doubted a lot of other things we did along the way.
'At the end of the day, how we play towards the back end of the season – everyone will have an opinion on that – but we're really comfortable with what we're doing now and how our team is evolving.
'It was such a quality game last week and it was like a benchmark game for the season, so I don't think there needs to be too much negativity around how we played last week.'
Stephen Crichton's teammates rallied around him after a few late errors last week. Picture:The Bulldogs only trail ladder leaders Canberra on for and against, with the blue and whites looking to bounce back after their narrow loss to Penrith in what was the game of the season.
They missed a late chance to win it when skipper Stephen Crichton's pass went into touch, with his teammates quick to pick him up and support him.
That's something Crichton would have done when he joined the club, with his traits now rubbing off on his teammates.
'That was great. We're a very connected team and a very connected club at the moment, and that's really important,' Ciraldo said.
'There's a lot of outside noise about disruptions and things like that, but if you look at those key moments in the game last week… the way our team came together makes me really proud as a coach.'
Their next challenge is against a Broncos side that thrashed them in round 8 to snap their winning streak to start the season, with Brisbane racing in six first-half tries to ambush their rivals.
Both teams will be missing a stack of Origin stars, but Ciraldo is backing his team to learn from what went wrong when they met back in April.
Poor discipline hurt the Bulldogs when they met Brisbane earlier this year. Picture:'There are some really good lessons for us there, but there were also some really good parts of our identity where we just fought for the end and never gave up and had a really good second half,' he said.
'There are lessons every week but particularly that week.
'We reviewed it pretty heavily at the time, but it's always good to go back and look at what went well and what didn't.
'I'd like to see us build on what we did last week. We learnt lots of lessons in round 8 against the Broncos, but we learnt plenty of lessons last week as well. I just want to see us put as many of those into action as we can.'