Western Bulldogs captain Marcus Bontempelli has shared the latest on Jamarra Ugle-Hagan’s situation amid a report he recently missed “scheduled sessions” at the club.
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Ugle-Hagan, amid dealing with personal issues away from the game, has been on a “flexible” training itinerary for multiple months.
Herald Sun journalist Lauren Wood reported the 22-year-old missed a pair of planned sessions this week but stressed the Bulldogs were accepting of his absence.
“He has missed scheduled sessions on both Monday and Tuesday,” Wood told Fox Footy’s Midweek Tackle on Tuesday.
“Now, the big thing here is that he has been in communication with the club over the last couple of days as to why he missed those sessions. The club is saying they’re OK with it, but I think at the heart of this is that they were scheduled sessions.
“Things have been going really well for the better part of three or four weeks now. He’d been back at training, turning up regularly since that Indigenous All Stars camp in Perth, but has missed scheduled sessions over the last 48 hours.”
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Fellow Herald Sun journalist Jon Ralph added: “The problem here is the lack of trust, and it goes both ways. So, maybe he just woke up, didn’t feel great, got out of bed and said ‘I’m not coming into training’.
“But on that Monday morning, his coach (Luke Beveridge) had been, not critical of him, but suggested that it’s going to be a long, long way back for him, and he has to win the trust back.
“In their heart of hearts, they don’t quite trust him yet.”
Wood added: “I think that is what is at the heart of this; there is that trust issue that comes with it … missing those scheduled sessions, it is the communication that is the big thing that the club is hanging this on, talking to them late today.”
The reports from Wood and Ralph came shortly after Ugle-Hagan’s captain spoke at length about the situation on Fox Footy’s AFL 360.
“I’m aware of it (the current situation) … I think it just continues to speak to the delicacy in which we try and handle every person at the football club and prioritise their health and wellbeing,” Bontempelli told Fox Footy on Tuesday.
“I know it’ll sound somewhat similar to how I’ve answered these questions in the past, because the support for Jamarra is A1 as a person before it is a footballer, and obviously the challenges that have been documented, we’re obviously still processing and dealing with (those).
“It’s why, I guess, his return to full training has been staged — to allow for him to able to segment things and work through the challenges that he has.
“I spend a lot of time talking to him to try and help him from more a personal level than a football level, and we just continue to work through the process of week-to-week.”
Asked if he feels like he has a full understanding Ugle-Hagan’s issues, Bontempelli said “I do” before understandably opting against going into detail.
“I understand there’s public interest, and we’ve got, as a football club, due diligence to talk to it on whatever level we can, but the priority is he’s a young human being who’s really working through some challenges in his personal space,” the Dogs’ skipper continued.
“There’s no doubt at different times you get frustrated by the … dredging up of things that are historical and brought into relevance now, and as I said I get it — I get the landscape, I’ve been in it for a long period of time — (but) it doesn’t make it any easier to talk about it.
“And as I said, with the delicacy of things, all I can say is that there’s a lot of people putting a lot of hard work to support him. I’m doing that, there’s a lot of people at the football club and outside the football club who are doing their best to help him, and so is he. It’s a tough one, but it’s just the world we live in at the minute.”
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Bontempelli reiterated the Bulldogs’ “MO (mode of operation) for months” has been to focus on Ugle-Hagan the person, not Ugle-Hagan the AFL player.
“There was a narrative that he was back, but that was sort of as he continued to expose himself back into, I guess, conditioning to even talk about playing,” he said.
“There is still no timeline, and that’s with Jamarra’s best interests at heart. Like I said, the support aspect is number one, the football aspect is still (something) we’re not really even discussing.
“And I get it — I’ll field the questions, we all will — but sometimes the answer’s going to remain the same, I think, until he and the club feel like things are in a place where we can even consider that.”
Asked by co-host Gerard Whateley if Bontempelli was optimistic Ugle-Hagan could fulfil his footy potential, the skipper said: “I am, I’m always sort of glass half-full.
“I think that’s how we should be, and we’ll do everything we can on our end to make sure he’s given every opportunity that he needs on and off the field.
“I don’t think I can answer it any more plainly than that.”
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