Bulldogs prodigy could miss entire 2024 season.

He is facing immediate neck surgery.

NRL news 2023: Canterbury Bulldogs star Karl Oloapu set for 'immediate neck surgery'

Canterbury Bulldogs youngster Karl Oloapu is reportedly facing the prospect of missing the entire 2024 NRL season.

Journalist Danny Weidler has reported that Oloapu is facing immediate neck surgery and the prospect of playing no football in the upcoming 2024 season.

Weidler also revealed that Oloapu’s long-term future will then be decided after surgery has been performed on the youngster.

The report from Weidler comes after the rising star was ruled out of the Pacific Championship for Samoa. At the time, multiple publications, including News Corp, had reported that he had been plagued by a neck injury for the majority of the 2023 season.

The 18-year-old made his NRL debut in 2023 before playing a further seven matches for the Bulldogs during the home-and-away season.

Karl Oloapu entered the Bulldogs squad after they paid $500,000 to the Brisbane Broncos for his signing and has been a sensation in the halves while also being named in the U18s Queensland Emerging Origin squad.

2023 review: Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs

The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs entered the new 2023 season with hope, as they have done for the past few years. With promising off-season after promising off-season, the Bulldogs have always seemed like the sleeping giants heading into the new year.

Yet, it’s been a long time since they’ve delivered on any potential. So would 2023 finally be the year where the arrival of big name signings, including new head coach Cameron Ciraldo, could lift them back into the top eight?

A promising start to the season gave fans yet another spoonful of hope, before it all came crashing down as the year wore on.

Four straight losses rounded the season out, and saw the Bulldogs drop all the way down to their final ladder position of 15th.

Under-achieving yet again, Ciraldo and the club have a lot of work to do to finally turn their NRL side around.

Turning point

The Bulldogs’ loss to the Sydney Roosters in Round 14 was a crucial point in their season. Heading into the game off a bye, and before that an important win over the Titans, Canterbury looked up for the challenge against Easts.

They went down 25-24 in a thriller on the Central Coast, a knife to the heart of the fans. This loss would turn into a four game losing streak, culminating in an embarrassing 66-0 loss to Newcastle. It very much spelled the end of any finals hopes.

What worked

The Bulldogs’ first five rounds of the season showed some promising signs. Despite a heavy loss to a strong Manly side to open their campaign, Canterbury-Bankstown shocked the rugby league world with a comfortable second round 26-12 victory over the Melbourne Storm in Melbourne – the only away side to record victory at AAMI Park in 2023.

They backed this up with a narrow victory against the Wests Tigers, and were unlucky not to record a third straight victory when they went down by only two points to the Warriors in round four.

A one point round five victory against the North Queensland Cowboys rounded out the best five game record of the season for the Bulldogs.

What didn’t work

Defence, which was pretty atrocious throughout the entire season. They easily amassed the worst defensive record across the regular season, letting in a total of 769 points, nearly 100 more than the second worst, wooden spooners the Wests Tigers.

Rarely a game passed in which the Bulldogs didn’t concede near to or more than 30, and this meant that even when Canterbury-Bankstown won, the game was incredibly high-scoring, in one case recording a 36-32 win when they took down Souths in Round 19.