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.”