WILLIE Mason said he could have finished his career with a fairytale swansong at the Bulldogs last season - if not for a mind-boggling meeting with Des Hasler.
Mason was coming off a season at Manly in 2015 and met with Hasler to discuss a contract - only to be left baffled by the embattled coach’s obsession with statistics.
“I was keen, it sounded really good on paper: Go back, play your 300th game for the club, OK, let’s talk a bit of footy,” Mason said on his
Skipi TV show ‘Unfiltered’.
“I met Des in Darling Harbour and we had a coffee and started talking about football and life in general. Then he just, bang, put out this big book with stats on everything. On everything. From f***ing day dot.
“In his eyes, I don’t know if they are twisted or football has just got to him but Aiden Tolman was the best prop in the game. But to me, no disrespect to Aiden, [but] I was 35 and I’d still dust him up.
“In my eyes, I’m like, ‘No Sam Burgess [was the best], or George Burgess at that time - they were killing it. I said, ‘Do you ever go by the eye test Des and look at what he brings and what sort of emotion and physical presence, and how much drive he has on the field and how much he can get people going with him, and the leadership skills, instead of finding your front of the play the ball, tackling 45 times?’
“There’s a reason why you tackle 45 times if you’re a front-rower: Because you’re a spot player. I don’t get run at 50 times a game, because I’d hope to think that I can actually tackle all right.
“At that stage it really put me off rugby league and pretty much forced me to France. It did my head in. I was thinking, ‘I don’t know how to play football anymore. France seems so good right now’.
“The best thing Des said was go to France and enjoy the last year. I’ve got so much respect for Des, but that was the best thing he said in the entire meeting.”
Another Bulldog appearing on Unfiltered, Reni Maitua, won a Canterbury premiership alongside Mason in 2004 and returned to the club in 2014. He did not recognise the place, accusing Hasler of completely changing the culture - an oft-repeated criticism from former Bulldogs as the coach fights to keep his job.
“The work ethic was still the same but from someone who had played 100 first grade games, plus 50 Flegg and reserve grade games there, I came back and I felt like a complete outsider,” Maitua said.
“That wasn’t because of not being accepted by the players or anything like that — the place had changed. It was just not the Bulldog culture that was bred into me.
“When I came to the club as a Souths junior, it wasn’t long before I bought into the Bulldogs environment and culture. I knew everything about every ex player. I knew what every player did throughout the 80s and the legacy they built in the 90s and into the early 2000s.
“I was lucky enough to come into a system in the ‘04 season and win the grand final but Canterbury had been building towards that.
“But when I went back in 2014, it was like I’d never played there before.”
Maitua says Hasler, who coached two premierships at Manly, will never be a real Bulldog.
“Des is a Manly person with a Bulldogs shirt on,” he said. “I don’t think they wanted to have any sort of history with the club.
“That is his vehicle to be successful as a coach to be at Canterbury but he will always be Manly. If you take him into a room and held him at gunpoint and said, ‘Who do you go for? he is going to say I’m a Manly person.”
Maitua said he believed Hasler was too smart for rugby league, as he overloaded players with complicated information.
