‘Not a good look’: Dragons veteran lifts the lid on Mikaele Ravalawa-Zane Musgrove incident
Dragons veteran Aaron Woods has revealed an early morning incident involving two of his team-mates and admitted it was “not a good look” for the struggling club.
After a disappointing 42-24 loss to South Sydney in Saturday’s annual Charity Shield test match, the playgroup were given permission to go out and have a few beers in Mudgee, with the Red V getting the bye in the opening round of the season.
The majority of St George Illawarra’s squad performed well and enjoyed their time together – but a scuffle between two players at 6am on Sunday left the club yet another black eye.
Mikaeale Ravalawa and Zane Musgrove were reportedly forced to be separated by teammates after a verbal altercation while the Dragons investigated the incident and possible sanctions.
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Speaking of triple M, Woods revealed some of the players lined up after their visit to the pub and it escalated after he slept in bed.
“Obviously the game wasn’t our best performance, it was pretty bad and it was talked about quite a bit all weekend,” he said.
“At the end of the day it’s a test, but by the standards we hold ourselves to, it wasn’t good enough.
“It was a pretty gloomy dressing room… we all stayed together in a small hotel, we got to have a couple of beers because we haven’t played for three weeks now.
“We have the first round bye and we don’t play the second round until Sunday. It was the only opportunity to sit down and bunker and when we go out it’s all in and we all stick together.”
“We ended up getting home and some of the other guys got a bit rowdy in the hotel room. It was similar to Latrell and Jack Wighton, but there was no police involvement or anything else.
“It was just a little fight with men, a little bit of wrestling happened and after that we were all best buddies again.
“We haven’t really looked into it yet, we haven’t practiced yet, but we’re into it tomorrow and we’re going to sit down and talk about it.
“I’m sure the players who did something wrong will address the group and we’ll see from there.”
Musgrove and Ravalawa are not expected to be penalized by the NRL but could face fines imposed by the club following the incident.
The brawl continues a horror offseason for the Dragons, who are already missing young gunman Talatau Amone due to his ongoing legal battle and are beset by a slew of injury and illness concerns across the group.
To make matters worse, the loss to the Rabbitohs has put head coach Anthony Griffin under even more pressure.
Woods admitted the latest incident didn’t look good, but believes the players had every right to go out and enjoy a few drinks with an extended rest ahead of their Round 2 clash with the Titans.
“It wasn’t the best weekend for the Dragons,” he said.
“The game didn’t go the way we wanted it to, everyone was pretty frustrated, but you don’t want to harp on about it.
“We had to bunker and wanted to sit down and have a few beers. We went to the local pub… we came back, some went to bed and others were still fooling around in their rooms and it just escalated.
“It probably doesn’t look good from the outside, but everyone was cute the next morning.”