What do you think?

Look, I'm just sick and tired of the NRL trying to manage the game.

They're, you know, they're managing me out.

The, uh, my passion is, is diminishing because of it.

I'm sick and tired of all these s- six starts again, start again, start again, start again.

I mean, uh, if you're on, in the defensive team, I know you're probably, you know, stuffed up around the ruck or whatever, um, but you're gonna get so tired when you get the ball, you're not gonna be able to do anything with it.

And, um, it was always good, you know, when they blew a penalty and you'd see the forwards, you know, sort of walking off.

It's, it's now just the Wests Tigers, but-

Carlson actually made it to college on a scholarship, but then his, his past kinda started catching up with him.

So as I went on, like, it was hard.

I was kinda just spinning my wheels.

I started drinking.

Drinking became an issue, and so, likeTowards the end of my first semester in l- in college, like, I was just, like, really depressed.

I felt, like, really withdrawn from everybody else.

Um, I couldn't make friends.

He told me a story that at one point he was shooting out streetlights with a Glock, and the police converge on him.

And he knows these kids look up to him because he's strong and because he's fought at war, but he's trying to teach them a different lesson about fighting than the one he grew up with.

Like, I thought then that the value was the actual violence, being able to do that violence to other people.

It just needed to be deserving people that you did the violence to, which is backwards.

Like, now I, I fully believe and know that violence of any kind is wrong.

It's, it's the least effective way to do anything.

Now, does that mean that they're, they're just...

if, like, you could snap your fingers and there's no violence? No, because there's still situations that I would be violent over, like my family's safety, and so you have to be able to do that, but you shouldn't want to do that.

He says he's just keeping the wolves at bay.