Bronson Xerri remembers a time when he couldn’t finish a pre-season training session and was so off the pace that Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo offered his new centre an out before a ball had even been kicked.
“Ciro [Ciraldo] came up to me and just goes, ‘Do you still want this?’,” Xerri recalls.
Bronson Xerri speaks to media at Belmore this week.Credit: Nick Moir
“I remember I was honestly so gassed, I couldn’t really speak, and [my reply] was, ‘Yeah, I still want this’, because I knew deep down I did still want it.”
The obstacles to Xerri’s first-grade return didn’t stop there. He toiled in reserve grade for the first month of the season, only making an NRL return in round five after winger Blake Wilson was ruled out with illness.
Xerri doesn’t mince his words when asked about the first few months with the Bulldogs, saying “there was times” when he thought first grade rugby league had passed him by.
He is now a nailed-on starter for one of the biggest surprise teams of the season, with a lucrative contract extension expected to be sealed in the off-season. He’s been a regular attacking threat, showing the speed and athleticism for which he was so highly touted during his breakout 2019 season with Cronulla before his four-year drugs ban.
Xerri was just 19 and tipped as a star of the future with the Sharks when banned after testing positive to anabolic steroids on the eve of the 2020 season.
Stephen Crichton – Xerri’s centre partner and Bulldogs captain – said while Xerri was “struggling a lot” during pre-season, he always saw his potential. Crichton has been helping Xerri with his video “homework” since he first asked for help.
Stephen Crichton at training on Tuesday. Credit: James Brickwood
“He just had to get a pre-season under his belt and get back into the rhythm and routine of being an NRL player, and he’s never flinched once,” Crichton said of Xerri. “He’s a special, special person off the field too – he’s the man.”
The Bulldogs will host Manly in an elimination final on Sunday afternoon, with Xerri and Crichton looming as a key figures in the club’s first finals series since 2016.
Xerri didn’t watch the finals series last year, focusing instead on improving his mental health after a difficult few years on the sidelines. He had “some sort of belief” he’d be playing in the finals the following year, crediting the staff and new signings with instilling a new level of confidence within the club.