‘I still carry shame about it’: The infamous incident which still haunts Carney 12 years on

Former Dally M Medial winner Todd Carney has opened up about the infamous ‘bubbler’ incident, saying he still carries “shame” over it 12 years later.

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Carney spoke on the CODE Sports SACKED NRL podcast recently and while he’s turned his life around and is doing great work coaching junior players in Queensland, his indiscretions as a player still haunt him.

Virtually all of his off-field issues were related to alcohol, including drink driving.

While he said he regretted the 2006 drink-driving incident the most because he could have hurt someone, the 2014 bubbler photo was what he still gets reminded about the most.

The bubbler incident in June 2014 involved Carney being pictured urinating into his own mouth inside Cronulla nightclub Northies.

It was a joke, which other players had taken part in, but were not photographed like Carney was.

Soon after, the Sharks ripped up Carney’s lucrative $650,000-a-year contract, effectively ending his career in Australia before he finished his playing days in the English Super League.

Carney, who has been sober for three years, said he wasn’t an alcoholic during his playing days, but a heavy binge drinker.

“I wasn’t someone who had beers in the fridge. I was a binge drinker. I didn’t drink every day,” he said.

“As a player I lived up to the highest standard possible. I trained my backside off and worked on my game. It was the aftermath of a win and the aftermath of a loss of how I reacted.

“It was never affecting my performances to make me play bad. The last game for Cronulla Sharks, I got man-of-the-match at Suncorp. We were down by 16 and I pulled the game back.

“Then two days later the photo comes out about the bubbler.”

Carney’s manager David Riolo called him as soon as the bubbler pictures started circulating on social media, assuming it happened after the win over the Broncos two days before.

Carney didn’t perform the joke that weekend but couldn’t remember when he did it.

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In the photo he had a black eye and he retraced his time and figured out that it occurred weeks earlier.

So he brushed it off.

“It (happened) a month before that so I was thinking it was going to be okay and I’m playing really good football,” he said.

“We were on the trajectory of winning a comp that year, the year I got sacked from Cronulla.”

Carney summed it up as a stupid thing to do.

He’s far from that person now and is currently a full-time junior pathways coach at the Titans and is on the coaching staff at the Keebra Park rugby league academy on the Gold Coast.

Carney said he still hasn’t been able to walk away from the bubbler incident.

“It’s quite strange that it continues. Two weeks ago I was running the water for a school game and it must have got around the school. I’ve been at the school at Keebra (Park) for three years now and no-one has ever said the bubbler,” he said.

“I was running the water and the crowd just started yelling it out. I turned around and laughed.”

Then he saw who was sledging him, and that surprised him most.

“I saw one of the kids that was yelling it out and I went up to him and said ‘you weren’t even born, how do you know?’” Carney said.

“And he goes, ‘oh my dad said something about it and told me to tell you to put you off your game’.

“I said ‘it’s not going to put me off my game’, but it probably does a bit because I’ve got to send messages to players and things like that.”

Despite being judged the game’s best player in 2010, Carney felt he was on top of his game four years later when the bubbler incident occurred.

“It did cause World War III and I’m not proud of it,” he said.

“I was flying at the time and was probably playing my best football at Cronulla and I just hit my sweat spot as a player.

“I had to deal with it and it took a long time to swallow it. I can laugh about it now but I still carry shame about it.”

Carney appeared on Finals Footy with Matty Johns on Sunday night and talked about his coaching and if he harboured dreams of one day climbing the ranks to become an NRL head coach.

“I get confused when I get asked this question because I’m so unsure because I respect the game so much and respect how hard head coaches work,” Carney said.

“I’ve got a young family and they’ll always be a priority…but in years to come, definitely.

“It’s baby steps for me. I feel that if I’m rushed into it the enjoyment part might go.”

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