Drugs, depression and collapsing in the Wanda sand dunes: Inside Bronson Xerri’s ‘crazy’ comeback
Bronson Xerri has just collapsed in the Wanda sand dunes as, shocked, and all around him, Canterbury players and staffers rush in.
Which has to be more than a little concerning, right?
Especially given Xerri’s hyped NRL revival, it’s right now only four, maybe five days in.
Week one of Canterbury preseason
Yet now here he is, the Comeback Kid, concerningly sprawled out, exhausted, in the dunes.
But what Xerri really wants you to know about that final run of a gruelling summer session?
“I got through it,” he grins, kicked back this particular Wednesday and chatting through what isn’t so much a redemption story, or even a resurrection headline, as simply a yarn worth telling.
Understanding it has now been four winters since this former Menai prodigy, aged 19, and already conjuring the type of talk that involves NSW Origin jerseys, popped hot, pissed green, or whatever else you want to call it.
Put simply, the kid cheated.
Took the easy route – or more specifically, took an injection all testosterone, androsterone, and various other combinations of letters and numbers – only to then be dobbed in, caught out and eventually handed the type of penalty that is four years working jobsites, paying your own gym fees and basically living like the rest of us Joe Averages.
Which is why there’s little point telling you how Xerri, then a Cronulla Next Big Thing, had just played his entire debut season with a right shoulder busted, and kept together by Elastoplast, before then enduring two troublesome surgeries, plus a follow up infection.
After all, most people won’t need to leave their lounge room, much less neighbourhood, to find someone who has endured worse.
Still, this is how it went.
Same as Xerri, once busted, would also dip deep into a depression – “for a time, I hated myself” – while also being consumed by a separate drama which, around the time of those 2019 surgeries, was also his older brother being jailed over a car accident that tragically caused the passing of a mother of three.
Which isn’t how things were ever supposed to go for this gifted Shire junior who, since taking up the sport aged four, had always considered success on a footy field paramount given, well, there has never been any Plan B.
“So after two shoulder surgeries, then an infection,” he recounts, “I was in all sorts.
“I was 19, had been selected in all these rep teams, but instead I’m watching them play on TV.
“Then my brother got into a car crash.
“It was a dark time and there was no real thinking behind any of what I did.
“I didn’t want to get faster, or even stronger … I just wanted to play.
“And I take full responsibility for that.
“This is on nobody but me.”
Which is why that day in the Wanda dunes, it matters.
Understanding that when it comes to everything a positive PED conviction screams – like a fella chasing shortcuts, easy outs, all of it – Xerri doesn’t need to convince you or I that he isn’t that person.
But as for those players inside and outside him?
Yeah, what they think matters.
Especially if you’re a Bulldog circa 2024.
A mob who, after finishing third last in coach Cameron Ciraldo’s rookie season, and boasting a defence with all the strength of a grass clippings wall, have since shaken up their roster, found fellas who thwack, and now sit — gasp — sixth.
More than simply reducing their number of points conceded, these latest Dogs of War have halved them – and, crucially, while using that same defensive structure Ciraldo implanted last year after it had already helped Penrith to a pair of NRL premierships.
As revealed by Fox Sports Australia only a few weeks back, when Ciraldo and Bulldogs GM Phil Gould went looking to create this change now taking place, they not only chased genuine talent – think NSW No.3 Stephen Crichton – but tough men to fit Ciraldo’s tackling, scrambling, winning system.
“So, yeah, I collapsed in the dunes,” Xerri recounts. “But only after I finished.”
Although to be fair, it was touch and go.
“As soon as I got over the line, I fainted,” this newest Bulldog continues of a moment which, he stresses, never saw him black out or suffer any further consequences.
“But still, it was crazy.
“All the boys ran over straight away …”
Again, which matters.
“Because that day,” he insists, “I think that’s when I won the boys over.
“They saw I never stopped until I dropped.”
Still, you didn’t feel even a little like, maybe, after four years out of the NRL, and plenty questioning if you were ever really that guy to begin with, a first grade return was simply too much?
“Oh, no,” Xerri insists. “That’s the moment I felt I truly belonged”.
Which, as we said earlier, is a yarn worth telling.
Especially when in terms of NRL disappearing acts, rugby league is littered with young men who have been outed by injury, a botched surgery, even those 12 months comprising a Mormon mission and never return the same again.
Yet Xerri, now 23, and set to make his 10th appearance of the year against the Sydney Roosters this Saturday evening on the Central Coast, is proving something of an exception.
So say what you like about his past.
Plenty have.
And likely still do, right?
“Um, not really,” the Bulldogs centre replies when asked if his past indiscretions have been hurled back from over fences at Penrith, in Newcastle, even Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane.
“I haven’t heard anything yet.”
Nothing?
“Nothing,” he replies.
“But even if somebody does say something, it won’t affect me.
“I’ve got a fairly thick skin now.
“So people, players, they can say what they like.
“I’ve certainly prepared for it.
“But I think a lot of people understand the mistake I made, it never hurt anyone else.
“Only myself.
“And nobody is perfect.
“Still, I’ve put myself in this position.
“So whatever comes, I have to take it on board.”
Same deal now, his countless hours of relentless work.
Like Xerri now defending Canterbury’s left edge with all the technique, and work ethic, gained through five long months training with a group of 10 MMA fighters in western Sydney.
Sure, the kid’s also revived his speed under quirky Sydney sprint guru, Roger Fabri.
And reshaped a body that, at one point during his suspension, saw him balloon well into triple figures – and almost 15kg above his current playing weight – as he trained anonymously, and “like a bodybuilder”, in a gym over an hour’s drive from his Menai home “so I didn’t see anyone I knew”.
But what you really need to know about are those wrasslin’ sessions beginning in earnest last June.
It was here that Xerri started to build so much of what you’re seeing now.
With this former Cronulla wunderkind, after making his debut on the Doggies right edge, then switching to a left side that has conceded just nine tries so far this year.
Which put another way, is less than any other side not named reigning premiers, Penrith.
So again, you need to follow Xerri as he headed three times a week to a western Sydney fight gym, where among that crew of MMA fighters, he sweated through sessions to improve both his motor and tackle tech.
“And in five months, I didn’t win a single wrestle,” Xerri laughs.
“Not one.
“I’d travel all the way out there, three days a week, to be thrown around for an hour”.
Which those close to him stress, is not some new character trait.
“Growing up, I was always that kid who never partied, didn’t go to Schoolies, rugby league was everything for me,” he agrees.
“Making the NRL, that was my whole life.
“I went straight from school to fulltime with Cronulla.
“And was so dedicated.
“Even with that (positive test), I wasn’t trying to get stronger, faster.
“My only thought was ‘this is going to help me get back to footy’ — that’s why I took it.”
Same as why he played most of his debut season busted.
“Second NRL game, I dislocated my shoulder,” Xerri recounts of a match against Penrith where he also scored the first of what would be 13 tries over another 20 games.
So as for what kept him from breaking down as the headlines piled up?
“Strapping,” he shrugs.
“My shoulder was literally holding on for its life.
“But I didn’t want to come off after a game complaining, saying anything was sore.
“Same as I didn’t want anyone thinking I wasn’t ready, or wasn’t tough enough.
“So I kept going.”
Yet apart from refusing to delve into how much Cronulla was aware of the issue — “I won’t comment on that” – Xerri also has little interest in talking through details of that injection which, after initially making everything better, then took four years of his sporting life.
Stressing how given he never hurt anyone but himself, then went and did his time, he now has no desire for digging into the embers of an old, smouldering bonfire “that is now behind me”.
But as for what message he would give that younger version of himself who wanted back in so bad?
“Ah, geez,” Xerri starts, before then taking the longest of pauses.
“I guess … um … the one thing I’d say is ‘trust yourself’.”
Which now, undeniably, he is.
“And none of it’s been easy,” continues the footballer who, it should be stated, took more than one meeting to win over Ciraldo.
But after a couple of them, and countless phone calls made by the coach to people in Menai, plenty of whom he knew well given, coincidentally, he also grew up there, win over Ciraldo he has.
“And I’m proud of how far I’ve come,” Xerri says.
“So grateful too for all those who have helped me.”
At which point, the heavily inked athlete then talks for several minutes about family, friends, Fabri, teammates, personal trainers, the Bulldogs – “who knows where I’d be without them” – plus Cirro, and of course Gus, aka “the saviour”.
Then, finally, he turns the spotlight back onto the kid who started all this.
“Who was,” he concedes, “young and dumb.
“But still, but there’s no excuses for any of it.
“None.”
A truth you had to prove that day in the dunes, right?
“I’m the one who got myself into this,” he says simply. “So I’m the one has to get myself out”.
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