SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – APRIL 20: Bulldogs coach Trent Barrett looks on during a Canterbury Bulldogs NRL training session at Belmore Sports Ground on April 20, 2022 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
The Canterbury Bulldogs have finally ripped the band-aid off, with Trent Barrett resigning from his post as head coach on Monday morning.
Barrett’s decision – likely influenced by the fact he could see the writing on the wall at the embattled Bulldogs – was undoubtedly a case of jump before being pushed.
Canterbury sit dead last on the ladder after ten rounds, and for the second straight season, are well on the way to claiming not only the wooden spoon, but also likely the competition’s worst attacking record, a stat they held in 2021 by a considerable distance, scoring just 340 points in 24 games.
The second-worst attacking team was the Newcastle Knights – who somehow snuck into the top eight – but even they scored an extra 68 points. Then came the Brisbane Broncos and New Zealand Warriors, but they were both over 100 points further advanced than Canterbury.
The 2021 season might have been unacceptable, but a roster which Barrett inherited but was anything but competitive carried much of the blame.
In changing the club, the Bulldogs have tried a lot. Director of football Phil Gould and Trent Barrett moulded the roster into one the coach should have been able to work with, but it has been more of the same out of Belmore.
In the end, it was simply going to be too long to wait for the arrival of Reed Mahoney in 2023 – the Bulldogs needed a fresh change, and that’s exactly what they will get in the coming weeks.
Replacing Barrett is going to have an enormous level of complexity, and that is made all the tougher by the fact Gould will likely have the casting vote in who to sign next.
Whatever the case, the Bulldogs must sign a proven winner.
Fans of the once-proud club will not accept anything less. The days of recovering from Des Hasler’s enormous salary cap problems at the club can’t be relied on as a source of excuse anymore.
They are gone, and so are most of the players of that era. It’s time for success at Belmore, and so this decision on who to bring in as next coach – likely from the start of the 2023 campaign rather than this year – is the biggest in the club’s history.
That’s no small statement, but it doesn’t feel like it’s an overstatement either.
And that being said, this isn’t a decision the Bulldogs can afford to rush. It’s almost undoubted that club powerbrokers will already have an idea of who they want to bring in.
Early rumblings suggest Paul Green and Shane Flanagan are at the top of the hit list, while Brad Fittler is another name who has been floated.
The fact the club can look internally for an interim coach in David Furner, or, as reports suggested on Tuesday evening, Michael Potter.
An interim coach to guide the rest of 2022 is hardly the issue for the men from Belmore though. This season, with a record of two and eight and a must-win game on Friday against the Wests Tigers – one they seem unlikely to win on the surface – is gone.
There is no recovery in 2022.
That all said though, Flanagan and Green have both had their shots in the NRL, and while it would appear they are the two at the top of the hit list, neither should be ahead of Kristian Woolf in the pecking order.
Flanagan has the problem of son Kyle at the club, which, in a relationship like Nathan and Ivan Cleary, who are among the best player and coach in the game, works.
At the Bulldogs, a club on struggle street, it may not.
Green, on the other hand, came out of a Cowboys’ system where he was at one point a surprise premiership-winner, but had no other success to write home about.
Arguably, that premiership, on the back of an incredible run through the second half of the season, was more of a product developed by Johnathan Thurston than Green himself.
Without much other success to write home about, neither Flanagan or Green, or Fittler for that matter, who has since all but ruled himself out of the running, seem like the right option.
Cameron Ciraldo, commonly seen as the next NRL coach, is also unlikely to move away from Penrith for anything less than the perfect role.
Enter Kristian Woolf though.
The Tongan international coach got his break with a shift to St Helens in England and has had excellent results come out of the Super League since he made the switch halfway around the world.
In charge of Tonga alone, he has turned the country into something of a Tier 1 candidate who can challenge the big three of Australia, New Zealand and England, while at St Helens, his winning run is phenomenal.
Taking over the team in the 2020 season, he has won back-to-back grand finals, and while the Super League in many ways has pitfalls in competitiveness, Woolf is an Australian at heart who understands the NRL.
He has formerly held assistant coaching jobs in the competition and has recently mentioned he may not be locked into St Helens for the long-term, with his contract expiring at the end of the year.
When recently asked about his future, Woolf had this to say.
“I’m not quite sure at this stage,” Woolf said.
“There are a few things for me to weigh up there but I love what this club offers and what this playing group do and that’s the most important thing.
“I would certainly be more than happy to keep with the playing group but there are a few things to consider at this time.”
More importantly than any of the credentials he has picked up in England, for a club like the Bulldogs, he has held many different roles within the NRL, as a Cowboys’ junior development manager, the team’s NYC coach – where he took them to a grand final in 2011, and then as an assistant coach at the Brisbane Broncos.
He also coached the Townsville Blackhawks in 2015, qualifying for the grand final in his first season in charge, before spending time as part of Nathan Brown’s staff at the Newcastle Knights.
Woolf understands the Australian game, and has experience at all levels to fit in at a rebuilding, but in urgent need of results club, like the Bulldogs.
His relationship with Phil Gould is unknown, but the Bulldogs can hardly afford to make the wrong decision here.
Woolf seems like the one they should be moving mountains for.
Source:: ZeroTackle
