Trent Barrett is gone - who should coach the Bulldogs?

Four years ago, Cameron Ciraldo phoned Craig Fitzgibbon and took a gentle swing.

“Hurry up and take a job,” Ciraldo joked. “What are you waiting for?”

The pair knew each other from their time together coaching NSW Country when Fitzgibbon was head coach and Ciraldo his assistant.

Fitzgibbon was at the front of the production line as the Next Big Thing in coaching, having served a long apprenticeship under Trent Robinson at the Roosters.

“I’m waiting for the right job,” replied Fitzgibbon, who has the patience of an Easter Island statue.

The future of under-siege Bulldogs coach Trent Barrett will be discussed by the club’s board on Monday.Credit: Getty

Fitzgibbon knocked back approaches from the Warriors, Newcastle, North Queensland and St George Illawarra before landing this season at Cronulla, where he’s been an overnight success 10 years in the making.

Now, Ciraldo finds himself at the front of the line, so successful has he been in all his years at Penrith, including Saturday night’s statement victory over Melbourne when he stood in for coach Ivan Cleary, who had a knee infection.

He’s already knocked back the Wests Tigers and rebuffed an offer from Fitzgibbon to join him as assistant coach.

A little-known fact is the Dragons sniffed him out two years ago after sacking Paul McGregor, but Ciraldo was mature enough to tell them he wasn’t ready. Anthony Griffin was appointed instead.

Is Ciraldo ready to become the next coach of the Bulldogs after their twitchy board maneuvered Trent Barrett into quitting on Monday morning?

Not now. Not in a million years.

There are reports a new coach could take over as soon as Wednesday, which seems premature. Out-of-work coaches Paul Green and Shane Flanagan are being linked to the job, along with Ciraldo.

The problem for the Bulldogs is their football side appears so fundamentally broken, their roster so lopsided with players who are on too much money, don’t want to be there or don’t seem to care, it wouldn’t be the right fit for any coach.

Yet it would take one of the modern-day supercoaches – Bellamy, Bennett or Robinson — to dig Canterbury out of this mess.

People latch onto director of football Phil Gould’s recent remarks on Nine’s 100% Footy about Barrett being at the Bulldogs “long after I’m gone” but the decision will be taken out of his hands, which might have its own implications.

Perhaps Gould’s comments from September 2020 on the same program hold greater significance.

An assistant at Penrith working alongside Ciraldo, Barrett was in the frame to replace Dean Pay at Belmore, mostly because Gould had suggested as much to frustrated directors.

Suddenly, on air, Gould had a change of mind.

“He’s in a really good club at the moment at the Panthers, he’s got a great role and is doing a tremendous job,” Gould said. “I’d be nearly inclined to decline it and go back to where he is and just wait a little bit more time because the Bulldogs is an absolute mess. Behind the scenes it is a toxic mess.”

Instead, Barrett couldn’t help himself and jumped right into the toxic mess and, remarkably, so did Gould towards the end of last year.

It’s folly to predict what Gould would be thinking now but those same comments could apply to Ciraldo, who has been linked to the Bulldogs job for months.

Penrith types still chuckle when commentators cite how Griffin coached them to fourth when he was sacked in 2018.

The truth is Ciraldo, with the aid of Gould, was coaching them for the bulk of that season with Griffin on the periphery because he’d lost the faith of Panthers players.

Ciraldo shared with those Panthers players what he shares now: a close bond having coached them since the under-20s.

In that time, he’s become more than an assistant, almost assuming the role as co-coach alongside Cleary. He’s so serious about his job his contracts have included club-funded trips to major sporting franchises around the world.

Gould’s long-term intention was for Ivan Cleary to become general manager of football with Ciraldo to take over as head coach.

It still might happen. Cleary just extended until the end of 2027 but Ciraldo doesn’t seem like a coach in hurry. At 37, it’s not like time’s running out. He can afford to wait for the right job and the right job, in time, is Penrith.

If not Ciraldo at the Bulldogs, then who?

Only rugby league could throw up a plot line in which Flanagan becomes coach of the club he’s been butting heads with for two seasons because of how it’s used his son, Kyle.

That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t coach them. The Bulldogs require a coach who can rumble with the politics of the front office, something Flanagan certainly did at the Sharks for better or worse.

The Bulldogs are a club in perpetual disarray because of its front office. Or, more precisely, its boardroom.

Because football club elections are held every two years, football club decisions are more about appeasing voters than slowly rebuilding a once-proud club.

It’s why Canterbury burns through coaches and pays silly money to players like Tevita Pangai jnr.

The roster gets another sugar hit next year when Viliame Kikau and Reed Mahoney arrive but the problems at Belmore run deeper than the roster.

Barrett is gone. Good luck to whichever coach thinks Canterbury is “the right job” for them.