MARK ‘SPUDD’ CARROLL: Lachlan Galvin’s manager Isaac Moses needs to explain why teen is walking out on Tigers

One of the saddest sights I’ve seen was vision of Lachlan Galvin trying to hide away from the TV cameras at his family home.

There he was – the day after brushing the Tigers’ multi-million-dollar deal – removing his shoes and scurrying inside like a dodgy tradie on A Current Affair.

I’ve got kids not much older than Lachie and know, at 19, you are not fully equipped to take on what the big, bad world throws at you.

Geez, I know I made my fair share of mistakes at that age.

I don’t know how I would have coped with all the vitriol he’s had to endure this past week.

I thought of Galvin as I watched the Wests Tigers run on without him for the big Easter Monday clash against Parramatta.

Those of the sort of games you dreamed of playing in when you were a kid with posters of footy players on your bedroom wall.

Instead, the young fella was a few kilometres away, leaving Lidcombe Oval under tight security as media stalked him following his appearance in the NSW Cup.

Then on Tuesday afternoon Galvin gets recalled to Tigers’ first-grade side in another dramatic plot twist.

How did it all come to this?

I don’t place blame at Galvin’s feet, his family, his teammates, Benji Marshall or Shane Richardson.

I just want to know where the hell his manager – the hard-to-find Isaac Moses – is.

He’s been around the game long enough to know this whole thing was going to blow sky high and leave his client the target of hate and resentment.

I know the Tigers were agitating for a decision on Galvin’s future but all Moses had to say was there was two years to go on the existing contract and any negotiations could wait until the season was done and dusted.

By then we’d know how the team had performed under Benji Marshall and whether Galvin was keen to be part of the future.

How the hell Galvin has already decided Marshall is not the coach for him is beyond me.

Benji was one of the greatest five-eighths the game has seen and what he doesn’t know about playmaking could be fit on a matchstick.

Ignoring all that experience and wisdom would be akin to brushing Roger Federer as your tennis coach.

It just doesn’t make sense and there’s got to be more to it than that what we’re reading and hearing.

Again, where is Moses?

We have not heard a word from him.

Why is he not fronting the cameras to explain how and why his client is in this horrible position?

At the start of my career, I used a player manager and that helped me in the early stages when I was naïve about how the game – and the world in general - operated.

But I soon worked out I needed to surround myself with people who had my best interests at heart.

I left it to my father Dave to handle my affairs.

If I’m Galvin, I’m having serious thoughts about doing something similar.

Sure, Moses is a shrewd operator and delivers the big bucks.

But that’s not everything.

You want someone in your corner who knows how you tick and is fully invested in your every move.

The money will come for Galvin, that’s a given.

But you only get one reputation and his has copped a severe hammering.

AND DON’T GET ME STARTED

Okay, sign me up.

I’m now a fully paid member of the Canterbury true believers club.

Even though they’d won five in a row heading into Easter, I wanted to see how the Bulldogs handled the Good Friday intensity and atmosphere before declaring them a genuine premiership threat.

The last time they’d been in a similar cauldron they lost their bearings and were run down by Manly in week one of last year’s finals series.

But what a different a few months make.

This Dogs team is the real deal.

They did things so comfortably against the Rabbitohs that half their team could have walked out of Accor Stadium and visited the Easter Show for 10 minutes before returning.

South Sydney never looked a threat against that relentless Canterbury defence that has now kept a team scoreless for two consecutive weeks – a feat achieved for the first time in the club’s 89 years.

Their line speed is so good you’d swear we’d gone back to the 5m defensive rule.

They are in your face the moment you receive the ball.

And good luck the poor buggers having to confront them on kick returns.

You are damaged goods by the time they are done with you.

In attack, they are averaging 26 points per game with so much more to come once everything truly clicks.

Dogs boss Phil Gould and coach Cameron Ciraldo have done a tremendous job building a competitive team almost from scratch.

And while superstars Matt Burton and Viliame Kikau are the key architects, it’s workaholic players like Josh Curran, Kurt Mann and Jacob Preston that do it for me.

This is a team that can go all the way in 2025.