All Aboard The 2022 NRL Coaching Carousel

Feb 9, 2022, 11:37PM

Who would want to be a coach in the NRL?

It's more pressure than it is pleasure and the bad times often outweigh the good.

When things are humming and the team is winning, it's the players featuring on highlight reels and being elevated into representative teams. Should things turn sour and the losses pile up, the coach is the one in the hot seat navigating each game as if it's his last.

It's easier to sack one coach than overhaul a whole roster. It's also in the best interest of the front office to sack a coach rather than themselves for hiring the wrong person in the first place.

They're the easy option. The scapegoat.

Every club is looking for their Craig Bellamy or Trent Robinson. Some even have their long-term guy but become impatient or react too quickly to a poor patch of form without first assessing the extenuating circumstances. But, for the most part, sacking a coach is the lazy option before a rushed hiring process and promises to fans of THIS being the right guy.

Rinse and repeat for too many NRL clubs at the moment.

While every situation is different and not every coach leaves their club without another job, new coaches don't often add a lot to the W column in their first year - if they add anything.

Since the start of the 2002 NRL season, coaches in their first full year at the club have added just 1.09 wins to the previous season's win total.

If you remove the outlier 13 wins Kevin Moore added to the 2009 Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs following a horror wooden spoon-winning 2008 season which also featured the Sonny Bill Williams drama, that number drops further to 0.93.

A good first season isn't always a great indicator of future success either.

While Trent Robinson added 10 wins to the Sydney Roosters in 2013 before becoming one of the best coaches in the competition, Brian Smith was sacked two seasons after adding nine wins to the Roosters in 2010 with Jason Taylor also meeting the same fate after he improved the Rabbitohs by nine wins in his first season in charge in 2013.

Anthony Seibold's seven extra wins after taking over the South Sydney Rabbitohs in 2018 earned him a five-year deal with the Brisbane Broncos that lasted only two seasons.

Clubs often make quick decisions in the search for a quick fix but are left scrambling again shortly after. However, if we look at the premiership-winning coaches across the same span, it's not until roughly their fifth season that we see them lifting the Provan-Summons Trophy.

It takes time to build the sort of squad a coach hopes to play with.

Identifying players that fit the playing style and those that don't.

Training those that do and replacing those that don't.

Cohesion continues to be undervalued in rugby league both on the field and in the coaches box. A new coach can't implement a new system and introduce new players in a year or two - especially with how NRL recruitment works right now. Just one recent example: Cameron McInnes (a key feature of the Sharks roster for 2022) was signed three months before John Morris was sacked and four before Craig Fitzgibbon was confirmed to be replacing him. And that's a pretty good outcome compared to others over the years.

Provided the hire by a struggling club is right at the time, it looks best to allow for three seasons before making too many hasty decisions. Heading into the 2022 season, only Ricky Stuart (Grand Finalist), Craig Bellamy (Premiership winner), Trent Robinson (Premiership winner) and Brad Arthur (arguably very lucky) have been at their club for more than four years. We can put Ivan Cleary (Premiership winner) and Des Hasler (Premiership winner) in there as well given their prior stints at Penrith and Manly respectively.

It's not as simple as 'have a coach for five years and you'll win a premiership'. Clubs still need to pick the right guy (they often don't) and make good decisions when that guy inevitably hits a rough patch (they rarely do).

So, with the cycle sure to repeat this season given the two newbies and four or five in the hot seat before a ball has even been kicked, let's take a look at the lay of the coaching landscape for 2022.

Craig Fitzgibbon (Sharks): Great pedigree but we've seen plenty of movies that start with roses and rainbows before ending in a house of horrors before. To make his job arguably more stressful, he takes over a team that should be playing finals football. The Sharks are always close and played out some really good periods last season. With the additions they've made and the forward pack available to him, Fitzgibbon can be one of the rare coaches to add more than one win and feature in finals football in his first year.

Jason Demetriou (Rabbitohs): He's 'technically' in his first year as an NRL head coach but he has been preparing for this job for three years. He's not going in without notice and, most importantly, he has a relationship with the players while also having a say in who those players would be heading into 2022. Taking over a team that made a Grand Final is a tough act to follow but falling just short of another wouldn't be a failure.

Michael Maguire (Tigers): Boy, this is an important season for Madge. He's lucky to still be there after his job hung on a knife-edge following another finals-free season in 2021. Going into year four, perhaps the Tigers decision-makers took note of the fact that Ivan Cleary is the only coach to have added wins in their first season across the last six coaches and 20 years? Maguire has his roster; there is plenty to work with. He needs to end Wests Tigers' finals drought if he's to keep his job beyond this season, though.

Adam O'Brien (Knights): O'Brien is a guy that comes to mind when expressing caution over Fitzgibbon's influence in year one. Completing an impressive apprenticeship, he's not instilled a huge amount of confidence going into year three. Sure, he put the Knights into back-to-back finals for the first time since 2003. However, they were one of the worst 7th-placed teams in the history of the competition which is further evidenced by their 15th-ranked attack. His seat is still at a comfortable temperature but a slow start to the season will apply some pressure.

Brad Arthur (Eels): Sometimes a coach just can't take a team any further. Making four semi-finals in five years without being able to advance, Arthur may just be that coach for the Eels. They strangely extended him to the end of the 2024 season despite his current contract not ending until the end of 2022. Still, it wouldn't be the first time we've seen a player or coach moved along without starting the first season of an extension. It will take a terrible start to the year to trigger a mid-season removal, but Parramatta may come to regret that extension should their season end in Week 1 of the finals once again.

Trent Barrett (Bulldogs): Barrett is the coach the numbers in this article are for. He's in his second year and only just taking on the players he wants to have in his side. Those players will need time to work with Barrett and the other players around them. He 'should' be given at least another year beyond 2022 before he's judged too harshly. But this is the NRL...And Phil Gould is in the Bulldogs front office...

Kevin Walters (Broncos): Introduced as head coach to bring back some Broncos culture, Walters has calmed things down at Red Hill. Following years of negative headlines and bad results, there is talk of this team being a Top 8 challenger and on a positive path to success. It's up to Walters to get them there now. He seems limited as a first-grade tinkerman but has a deep and talented roster to work with. He has his on-field coach in Adam Reynolds out there now, too. Walters is looking for a contract extension but only an improvement to 2021 will get him close to putting pen to paper.

Despite what we know (rotating coaches doesn't translate into better results quickly, if at all) we're sure to see the coaching carousel continue on this season. Some coaches will be relieved of their duties and it will be the right decision. Other decisions will be panicked and reactionary. Struggling clubs tend to go with the latter and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

Good luck, coaches.

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Jason Oliver

As far as Jason is concerned, there is no better time of year than March through June. An overlap of the NBA and NRL seasons offer up daily opportunities to find an edge and fund the ever-increasing number of sports streaming services he subscribes to. If there's an underdog worth taking in either code, he'll be on it.