A Sayreville football player is defending his team, which has come under attack in recent weeks after accounts of hazing led the New Jersey high school to cancel the season.

“We’re all a family in there, we’re joking around, we’re a close-knit group of kids,” senior tight end Sean McIntosh said during an SNY roundtable that will air Thursday night.

“We got through the trials and tribulations of summer and school, running and hitting each other, we just really get along. We’re a companionship and a family.”

But that’s not the atmosphere some freshmen have described. Reports from NJ.com have revealed disturbing accounts of hazing that started with upperclassmen howling, the lights being shut off and players being held down while fingers were stuck in their rectums and then mouths. One player told the New York Times the attacks also included punching and kicking. 

McIntosh said he’s never seen any of the things that were described or heard any teammates talk about it.

“As a senior, I felt like the freshmen or sophomores or even juniors, they could come to the senior leadership and tell us that this is going on and we could’ve stopped it, but I never heard anything of it,” McIntosh said.

After the season was canceled, seven players were charged for sexual assault and five coaches were suspended indefinitely by the district. It’s still to be determined whether the players will be tried as minors or adults.

“As far as their mental state, it is a daunting, overwhelming experience for a child to be charged in this setting and then to have to deal with this in context of what’s going in the community, what’s going on with the program, what’s going on with their family and what’s going on with the news media,” said Pamela Brause, who is the lawyer of the defendants.