Weekend Read: Why Wests Tigers is the right spot for Cameron Ciraldo

Cameron Ciraldo seemingly has his pick of a number of NRL coaching jobs – Brent Read rates the contenders and comes to a surprising conclusion.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – MAY 21: Panthers assistant coach Cameron Ciraldo looks on during the round 11 NRL match between the Sydney Roosters and the Penrith Panthers at Sydney Cricket Ground, on May 21, 2022, in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

Give me a choice right now and I take the Wests Tigers.

For all their problems in recent years – their lack of finals football, their salary cap issues, their turbulence on and off the field – I would walk into the Tigers convinced that they are on the verge of something.

Can you say the same thing about Canterbury? Or the Warriors for that matter?

These are the questions Cameron Ciraldo may have to contemplate in coming weeks as he sits down to make a decision on his future.

There is every chance the Tigers job could become vacant within days, and Ciraldo would be the hot favourite for the position should the club decide to move on from Michael Maguire.

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Michael Maguire’s time with the Wests Tigers appears to be nearing its end. Picture: Mark Evans/Getty Images

The Bulldogs are expected to consider Ciraldo as well. So too the Warriors if they part ways with Nathan Brown at the end of the season and scour the ranks of the NRL for someone who can finally awake the sleeping giant.

It’s the Tigers, however, for me.

The same Tigers that this columnist has been critical of in recent years. Called them a basket case a few years back. That went down well.

Angered their fans at one point by suggesting they were going nowhere fast. Didn’t that set off Tigers fans on social media.

At one point, may even have suggested the game could do worse than look to relocate the Tigers rather than expand to 17 teams. Tigers fans really didn’t like that one.

At the time, I would argue the criticism was justified. They were treading water, flirting with the finals only to come up short time and time again. Hope was dwindling.

They haven’t played finals for a decade and the table may tell a different story, but they look to be heading in the right direction.

They have a Centre of Excellence on the verge of being open. All told, it will cost north of $50 million. They have Isaiah Papali’i and Api Koroisau on their way next season. And they have junior stocks that are bursting with talent.

They have green shoots everywhere.

Canterbury have an affluent leagues club and cap space in 2024, but they also have Phil Gould and working alongside the club’s head of football isn’t always easy.

It should be, given his acumen and intelligence. But it isn’t. History has proved that. If you’re still not convinced, just call Anthony Griffin and Ivan Cleary.

The Warriors have the ambition to pursue Ciraldo. Before they lured Brown to the club, they had a red-hot go at Craig Fitzgibbon.

There are some who would tell you that they almost had him too. Brown got the job and he appears on thin ice. Take that job and you have a whole country at your beck and call.

Still, if I am Ciraldo and I have all three jobs at my disposal, I like the Tigers and the direction they are heading.

Ciraldo will likely have the final say and he may end up staying at Penrith as an assistant coach to Ivan Cleary. He doesn’t appear like a man in a hurry. Never really has. His first grade career was restricted to only 94 first grade games pockmarked by serious injury.

Patience was required to overcome a badly broken fibula – teammates were forced to look away after he broke it in four places while playing against the Sharks – and a lacerated pancreas, the latter suffered while representing Italy.

The injury happened 15 minutes before he was due to draw the curtain on his career. A couple more millimetres and it could have been infinitely more serious. A couple more hours and Ciraldo would have been in dire straits.

Cameron Ciraldo is carried from the field after suffering a gruesome leg injury.

His rise was rapid at Penrith after he was offered a job on the coaching staff initially by Cleary, who liked what he saw when Ciraldo spent time with the Panthers’ SG Ball side while injured.

Cleary and Gould, then the Panthers head of football, kept Ciraldo around. He worked in the welfare department before slipping into a coaching role. At one point, he was eyeing off a place in the fire department, but got rejected.

He focused on his work with Penrith and he has been there ever since. Many will tell you he is as responsible for the Panthers’ recent success as Cleary himself.

The players swear by him. The club would love to keep him. They hope that they can convince him to remain patient, bathe in the Panthers’ glory days, and eventually walk into a plum job.

He would seem to have the tools to be a coaching star. The question now is whether it is time to leave. If he decides it is, and the opportunity arises, it is the Tigers for me.

* * * * *

As a Queenslander, I am wary. All the talk leading into the opening game of the State of Origin series is about a young Maroons side stacked with form players and led by a legend in Billy Slater.

There have been suggestions that an ambush is on the cards at Accor Stadium next week. The Maroons are outsiders with the bookies but shortening by the day.

Everyone, it seems, has forgotten that NSW have won three of the past four series. There’s a reason Brad Fittler is being linked with the coaching job at the Bulldogs. It’s because he has done a fairly handy job at the helm of the Blues.

The Maroons and their supporters would be wise not to underestimate the bloke in the NSW coaches box. He knows what he is doing.