Wrestling 30 to 35 team mates, big farkin deal, every game he would be expected to make at least 30+ tackles against opposition players, many of them bigger and stronger than you and running at you at speed with zero care for your wellbeing. In the Knoughts game Mahony (46), Salmon (41), Curran (34) and Hayward (43) all made more tackles than that, many times wrestling opponents to and on the ground.
If you want to be an NRL player, then there will be demands on you both physically and mentally that you have to train for. As Gould often says, being an NRL player is hard, very hard and only a tiny % of RL players can handle it. Not just once but every week, when injured, hurting, both mentally and physically fatigued well beyond what a normal person could even imagine, let alone handle.
The bottom line is Topine was being conditioned for the physical and mental requirements of being an NRL player and he failed. No shame in that, 99.9% don't make it.
The defense is simple, we were not asking any more of him than he would experience in an average NRL game.
Always a Bulldog