Anthony Griffin decision has exposed more problems at Dragons
Anthony Griffin looks a dead man walking at the Dragons but until the club is prepared to make the unpopular decisions things won’t get any better, writes PAUL KENT.
NRL
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Every morning Anthony Griffin gets up and heads to work at a job that might soon no longer be his.
They remain the great optimists, NRL coaches. They can find reason to get up from bed when most of us would just pull the covers over.
It can’t be much fun. The current status of their popularity, which can be a brutal read, is only as far away as their phone.
Still, Griffin gets up and drives to work each day and endures long, hard drives home like that on Sunday night, wondering where the hell it went wrong against Cronulla while in the background everybody has an opinion on his job performance.
The one thing Griffin is fast running out of, though, is time.
Time evaporates goodwill, which every coach needs.
Tim Sheens is running last but has all the goodwill in the world at the moment, for instance, because he is just four games into The Return.
Griffin is now in his fourth season as Dragons coach and has taken them to 12th, 11th and last year 10th.
A couple more years, he could argue, and the Dragons are finals bound.
But since it broke last week that St George Illawarra directors have informed him they will begin interviewing potential coaches, Griffin has essentially been relegated to dead man walking.
Where do the Dragons go from here?
It is a club that has forgotten what winning looks like. What small improvements have been made on the field are undermined by a management driven too much by the need for positive perceptions around the joint, which conveys weakness.
The great clubs win first and apologise later.
That details from last week’s board meeting were leaked within hours of it ending shows a club that is uneasy with itself and that not all its problems end with the coach.
If board members can’t trust each other to keep what’s private, private, what hope is there for the club?
How long Griffin has left has been speculated. Some say he has until round 10 to save his job.
If so, it’s a weak decision. A weak gesture designed to remove management from criticism.
It does nothing to help performance.
One idea being sold to the Dragons is the succession plan made popular in recent times by Wayne Bennett as he made the transition from club patriarch, as he was first time around at the Broncos, to hired gun.
Again, it’s a decision based on the path of least criticism.
Bennett was the bedrock at Brisbane for so long but has since moved from club to club, staying for no more than about three seasons at a time.
Part of his deal at each club was to help progress the young new coach the club hoped would succeed him.
Steve Price at the Dragons. Rick Stone at Newcastle. Jason Demetriou at Souths.
Under this new succession plan, the Dragons, or at least factions within the club, are considering Des Hasler be hired as coach and former Dragon Ben Hornby, currently an assistant at South Sydney, groomed to replace him.
The other option being considered by differing factions is Jason Ryles.
The problem for the Dragons is that Ryles is contracted at the Sydney Roosters and one of the conditions impressed upon him at the time he signed was an undertaking that he would not break contract to take another job elsewhere. It was the Adam O’Brien clause.
Before Ryles, O’Brien was lured from Melbourne but halfway through his first season, Newcastle came knocking with the coaching job and O’Brien was released to take it up.
The Roosters were hardly impressed, enough that when they won the premiership later that year the ice was still thawing and O’Brien did not get his premiership ring until some years later.
Already there is talk the Dragons will approach Roosters chairman Nick Politis to gauge how strongly the Roosters would fight for Ryles to stay.
It is a mistake the club doesn’t want to repeat after privately admitting they got it wrong when Craig Fitzgibbon, another Roosters assistant at the time, was approached about taking the job for last season.
Ryles is also being considered to replace Craig Bellamy. Most believe this will finally be the last season for Bellamy in Melbourne.
With Ryles quietly predicted as the first choice for both clubs, but with the extra layer of Roosters resistance thrown in, it will be a delicate negotiation to manoeuvre forward.
Meanwhile, Griffin heads to work each day, the road getting longer with each drive.
As long as it is for the coach, though, it will be worse for the club until it realises that often the right decisions are the unpopular decisions.
THE SIX GAMES THAT WILL DECIDE GRIFFIN’S FUTURE
By Phil Rothfield
St George Illawarra coach Anthony Griffin has six weeks to save his career.
Despite a thumping loss to the Cronulla Sharks on Sunday – the second week in a row that the Dragons have conceded 40 points – Saints are unlikely to dump him on the spot.
Griffin has a remarkably soft draw over the next six weeks: the Dolphins, Titans, Raiders, Roosters, Bulldogs and Wests Tigers.
The former Broncos and Penrith Panthers coach would need to win four of those six games.
The Dragons revealed last week they would be interviewing potential new coaches.
The likes of Ben Hornby, Dean Young, Jason Ryles and Shane Flanagan have all been mentioned.
Griffin needs wins desperately.
He began the season as an equal favourite with Newcastle’s Adam O’Brien and the Titans’ Justin Holbrook for being first coach sacked.
O’Brien has had a terrific start. The team is playing for him.
Holbrook has huge injury concerns but his side has been competitive.
Griffin and the Dragons on the other hand were terrible against the Sharks and at the back end of the Broncos game.
The likes of skipper and halfback Ben Hunt continue to publicly support the coach.
But at the end of the day it will come back to the scoreboard and competition points.
Dragons chief executive Ryan Webb said no timeline had been discussed but declined to comment on the dismal losses to Brisbane and Cronulla over the past fortnight.
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