NRL 2022: Fallout from Phil Gould’s Bulldogs takeover from Trent Barrett, Paul Kent

Phil Gould turned heads after taking over a Bulldogs training session this week, and it’s just the kind of free-spirited madness the NRL needs, writes Paul Kent.

Many years back Jimmy Breslin wrote in his New York column of an old streetwalker, clearly the practical type, walking into an empty Manhattan courtroom the day she heard a judge named Hymie Bushel was retiring.

“Is it true that Judge Bushel is retiring?” she asked the court officer.

“Yes, he is.”

“Then you tell him that I’m getting out, too.”

And with that she was gone.

Bushel had a reputation for being kind to the old streetwalkers and this particular woman, with age on her side, and all future appointments dwindling, was keen enough to understand that whatever advantage she was getting was about to go with Judge Bushel and that life without him would never be the same.

So it says here with some hope that Phil Gould never leaves rugby league.

The game is simply too much fun with him in it. The Bushel advantage will be gone once Gould leaves the game.

By way of evidence Gould took a sluggish week on the newsfront this week and lit a match to it.

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Given Phil Gould’s track record of axing coaches, Trent Barrett must be feeling the heat, writes Paul Kent.

For weeks the NRL news cycle had bogged down in repetitive talk of coaches under pressure and teams searching for form, Luke Brooks and his Tigers, sin-bins and judiciary misses. Then Gould took a sombre day and turned it into something else altogether.

Nobody else in the game could have blown it up like Gould.

He is a gift to us all.

Gould’s decision to take over the Bulldogs’ review and then later a training session on Tuesday was the kind of free-spirited madness the game is missing nowadays.

The fallout quickly matched the initial hysteria.

Trent Barrett, the head coach, might feel less enthused about what happened.

Even in their rebuttals the Dogs couldn’t make a case for Barrett’s long-term survival.

Every way was a winner for Gould and polishes his reputation.

If the Dogs continue to lose, then results determine Barrett will go. If they somehow begin winning then Gould obviously will be identified as the necessary circuit breaker, creating the case for why the Bulldogs need Barrett at all?

Given Gould doesn’t have the energy to coach full-time the obvious next step would be to find a coach capable of getting out of them what Gould did.

Bulldogs chairman John Khoury flexed the muscular calves of an Olympic high-jumper when he heroically leapt to Gould’s defence.

Gus taking over a Bulldogs training session is just the kind of madness the NRL needs, writes Paul Kent. Picture: Supplied.

“Phil’s track record speaks for itself and that’s why he is there. I would argue he is the most qualified person in rugby league,” Khoury said.

Gould probably is the most qualified man in rugby league. But that and $3 will get you a packet of chips.

What record Khoury is referring to, though, was not clear.

Gould is 64 now and was a brilliant young coach who coached his first premiership at 30 and his last, in 1991, at 33.

He was working for the Roosters in the early 2000s in a similar job to what he has now at Canterbury and success quickly followed when Ricky Stuart coached the Roosters to the 2002 premiership.

By association, Gould’s reputation as the boy genius was stamped.

In the 20 years since, though, as records go, Gould has not been employed at a single club when it has won a premiership. He received hearty praise for the job he did at rebuilding Penrith’s roster but the feeling out of Penrith is that, respectfully, Gould needed to go before the club realised its potential.

It was after Gould left and Cleary was given full control of the roster that the Panthers finally added the missing parts to the team and won themselves a premiership.

Trent Barrett may regret handing the reins to Gus this week, writes Paul Kent. Picture: Getty Images.

Gould is often referred to as something of a rugby league genius, which seems a simple way to explain his impressive intellect and persuasiveness, which seems to be what Khoury was referring to.

Hopefully Khoury was not referring to his record of working with coaches.

Stuart, of course, led the Roosters to two more grand finals but failed to receive Gould’s full support throughout.

“He needs help,” Gould said more than once, before Stuart was eventually sacked.

He hired Cleary then sacked him.

He hired Anthony Griffin and sacked him.

Then the Panthers had to go behind his back and re-hire Cleary.

With each of these coaches the beginning of the end came when Gould saw something he did not like in the team and took over at some point. The coach pushed to the sidelines, like Barrett on Tuesday.

This week, he thought the Bulldogs were “sluggish” at training.

“I said to Trent they need a liven up,” he said. “He threw me his whistle.”

It might be a costly toss.

Barrett attempted to explain Gould’s involvement by saying on Thursday he had invited him to the session, adding, “Why wouldn’t I use the resource of Phil Gould at the club?”

The answer requires only a conversation with Stuart, or Cleary, or Griffin to understand.

Both claim their collaboration was pre-planned and there is no reason to suggest it wasn’t, but it is also irrelevant.

There is nothing of the kind in the fine print but it is understood Gould has full control of Canterbury’s football program, including the employment of the coach.

Barrett insisted the players know who the head coach is, which might be true, but they also know who the boss is.

Like Judge Bushel only a few like this ever come along.

For the sake of everybody, may it continue forever.

The NRL needs to punish players for high shots in order to make teams actively coach it out of the game, writes Paul Kent. Picture: AAP.

NRL MUST BE SMART, NOT SOFT

Emotional arguments are always the hardest to win, particularly the kind where some will argue their argument is more correct than your fact.

Take Twitter, for instance. The place is full of it.

Little of it makes any sense, but some will argue until they collapse

One of the more emotive arguments around the game at the moment is the old “the game is going soft” challenge, which immediately makes anybody on that side of the interaction withdraw.

Rugby league truly is the toughest team sport in the world.

The velocity and G-forces, without the protection of padding, would attest to that.

It is a high-speed collision game, so naturally mistakes will happen and there will be tackles that go wrong and players injured as a result, and consequences for that.

But it’s a slow old process.

In France, a lower tier rugby competition is trialling the idea of allowing tackles only below the waist.

Nobody wants to see that.

High tackles have always been a send-off in the game but the change in the game has come with tackling techniques getting higher and higher in order to stop the ball at first contact.

Very little is done to voluntarily bring the tackles down by those within the game, and that is understandable. Coaches are paid to win, not sell.

But what would the game look like if League Central got involved and that was the case?

Nobody wants to entertain it, least of all the coaches. They speak heavily against it, and with considerable authority.

But what if the punishments were such that the coaches realised the competitive advantage was tackling lower to keep their players on the field, which might see a downturn on the overwhelming number of concussions we now see in the game.

It wouldn’t be soft, but could be smart.