NRL 2021: Dean Pay speaks out on Bulldogs stint, plus inside Canterbury pitch to Siosifa Talakai

He’s one of the most charismatic and well-loved players in the NRL. Here’s the story of how he almost jumped ship to the Canterbury Bulldogs.

Dean Pay gets no joy out of seeing Canterbury fail without him, and directs no anger at Trent Barrett.

But what Pay can’t hide is his raw honesty, which is just in his DNA.

And the former Bulldogs coach has opened up about why not bringing back Josh Reynolds to the club last year was the wrong call in his opinion.

Pay revealed how he told the club at the time: “Kids aren’t going to f***ing learn standing behind the goal posts”.

We called Pay this week to get his take on how life at the Bulldogs has started without him in 2021.

With Canterbury the only NRL team winless after six rounds, they now take on Cronulla on Saturday staring down the barrel of equalling the club’s worst ever start to a season.

That was set way back in 1964 when they lost their first seven games.

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The Bulldogs are facing the prospect of seven straight losses to start a season for the first time since 1964. Picture: Getty Images.

The TAB has even put out a betting market ranking the Dogs a $13 chance of finishing this season winless.

When Pay was punted Bulldogs fans were led to believe the worst was behind them.

Yet if anything the performances so far have gone backwards.

Not that Pay was about to throw stones because he knows exactly how soul destroying it would be for everyone involved, especially the young players who are at such a vulnerable time in their careers.

Pay also talked with a touch of sadness about watching a warrior like Josh Jackson constantly push his body to the brink for so little recognition or reward.

As for what it must be like for struggling young halves Kyle Flanagan and Jake Averillo, Pay can see the pressure building with each loss.

“It drains the life out of those kids,” he said.

Former coach Dean Pay thinks the clubs decision not to bring Josh Reynolds back was a massive mistake. Picture: Getty Images.

But that is also why Pay then reflected on a conversation he had about this time last year when he wanted to bring back Reynolds from Wests Tigers.

“I tried to get Reynolds back there for $100,000-a-year,” Pay continued.

“And they said, ‘No, don’t do it, we want to keep going with our kids’.

“And I said, ‘Well, your kids aren’t going to f***ing learn standing behind the goal posts.

“You have to get some competitive blokes there that want to f***ing win. Teach them how to win’.”

Which is exactly why Benji Marshall would also have been a good pick-up this year for minimum wage given the Bulldogs had let Kieran Foran go.

“100 per cent,” Pay agreed.

“At least he is going to give these blokes some confidence.”

Pay almost got Josh Reynolds’ signature for a bargain price, but the Bulldogs had other ideas. Picture: Getty Images.

When Pay was handed the reins at Canterbury the club’s salary cap was in disarray, with a stack of players on big back-ended contracts.

But as soon as blue skies appeared on the horizon in respect to having a clean slate to start building again, Pay was sent packing.

Looking back now, he can also pinpoint the exact moment his hopes of surviving long enough to build success pretty much came to a grinding halt.

“The back-end of the year before (2019) we won eight out of 10 games and you could see the confidence and the belief in just the way they walked around the place,” he recalled.

Then at the start of 2020 the Bulldogs went for a pre-season trip to Port Macquarie and Corey Harawira-Naera and Jayden Okunbor became embroiled in a sex scandal that led to both players being deregistered.

“And that just knocked the guts out of them,” Pay recalled.

“We had to start again.

“The players weren’t keen to let them go either, so I had to sort of mend a rift.

“But it was just one thing after another.”

In the end Pay knew he was fighting a losing battle.

He says he’s now doing some work in the building game and driving machinery.

Asked if he’d ever want to get back into coaching, he cracked up laughing at first.

But eventually he answered the question sincerely: “If there was an opportunity come up I’d look at it. But at the end of the day it is what it is.”

Pay thinks signing Benji Marshall was another missed opportunity. Picture: Getty Images.

HOW CLOSE BARRETT CAME TO SNARING SHARK

—Michael Carayannis

When Trent Barrett made his pitch to lure Sifa Talakai to the club he purely spoke about football. How Talakai plays and the direction the Bulldogs want to head. Despite being impressed by Barrett, Talakai opted to remain at Cronulla for two seasons.

Canterbury fans will get a first hand look at what they missed out on when Talakai lines up against the winless Bulldogs for Cronulla on Saturday.

“All we spoke about was footy,” Talakai said. “There was nothing like ‘if you come here we will give you this’. It was just general conversation. Just about footy in general and me as a player. He is a top bloke. I didn’t see myself leaving Cronulla. In the space of a year this has become pretty much home.”

The Bulldogs hope to snare another Shark after The Daily Telegraph this week revealed their interest in Toby Rudolf.

The meeting with Talakai happened earlier this month when he was still recovering from a serious shoulder injury. Just six weeks ago he could not lift his right shoulder above his head having had off-season shoulder surgery.

Trent Barrett has revealed he wanted to bring Sharks forward Siosifa Talakai to the Bulldogs. Picture: Phil Hillyard.

The back-rower was supposed to miss just the opening two weeks of the season when he first went under the knife last year but suffered a serious setback.

“My shoulder froze,” Talakai said. “It was stuck and I had no range. It was terrible. I remember thinking with this range how am I going to get back on the field, it was going to take months.

“Before I had the second surgery I was told I had to do a lot of rehab and stretching. It was frozen so I had to stretch it every day consistently. They thought it could free up anytime – next week or in months. But it wasn’t progressing.”

Talakai started fearing the worst. He had only just resurrected his career last year but was now unsure if his mobility would return and was worried about his future given he was off-contract at season’s end. A conversation with the Sharks’ medical staff led to another operation which turned out to be success.

“I was nervous,” Talakai said. “I was getting worried. At times it was frustrating being off-contract, thinking about it all. I knew once my shoulder came good I was going to be sweet to come back and play. There were tough times. Pre-season felt like it kept going and going.”

Talakai was originally slated to return this week but came back ahead of schedule to play against the Knights last week.

“I blew out pretty early and tried to hang on,” Talakai said. “The coach wasn’t looking for too much of a stint but just wanted me to get my feeling on the footy again. It was good to be out there.”