D-day nears for Dean Pay with Bulldogs set to make call on coach

The Bulldogs could make a call on Dean Pay as early as Monday and chances are he won’t like the answer.

Trent Barrett, left, has sparked the Panthers attack this season and is the favourite to be given the job at the Bulldogs. Picture: Getty Images

Canterbury coach Dean Pay has been calling for some clarity around his future and he could receive it as early as Monday. Chances are he won’t like what he hears.

The Bulldogs told Pay they would give him eight to 10 weeks to show them he was the coach to take the club into the future and the scoreboard would suggest he is on the thinnest of ice.

Nine games into the season and the Bulldogs have won only once, their latest loss among their most dire. The timing could not have been worse for Pay, who is off contract at the end of 2020.

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Pressure has been growing on the club to make a call on his future and it seems hard to believe Pay has done enough to convince the club he should be retained.

They were never in the hunt against a Broncos outfit who have struggled badly this season. Brisbane didn’t show much at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night, but they showed enough to suggest the Bulldogs are bound for another wooden spoon.

Change is in the wind — Pay is likely to be given the chance to finish his contract and stay until the end of the season — both at the coaching level and amid the playing ranks. The two are not mutually exclusive. The incoming coach has some calls to make on the future of several players, most notably Kieran Foran, Aiden Tolman and Adam Elliott.

All are off contract and while the club has indicated a willingness to engage in contract talks with all three, they are yet to reach a breakthrough.

Hence the need to act and act quickly on the coaching position. Pay has won less than 40 per cent of his games in charge and while he has been lumbered with well-documented roster difficulties, they are a distant last.

Canterbury are two wins clear at the foot of the ladder approaching the midpoint of a shortened season. They have been linked with audacious moves for Wayne Bennett and Craig Bellamy, but Penrith assistant and former Manly coach Trent Barrett has emerged as the latest favourite, his name appearing on the Bulldogs’ radar less than three years after former chair Ray Dib headed off a push for Barrett to appoint Pay.

Bulldogs coach Dean Pay. Picture: Brett Costello

Barrett was being heavily linked with the Bulldogs towards the end of Des Hasler’s time in charge — his manager Wayne Beavis was pushing him to the club — yet Dib made it a priority to appoint one of the Bulldogs’ own.

It came down to Pay and Jim Dymock, the latter eventually winning out. Barrett took some time away from coaching, made a cameo at NSW State of Origin training and then joined Penrith, where he has finetuned an attack that put 50 points on Cronulla at the weekend.

Penrith officials would not stand in Barrett’s way, although there is a degree of scepticism out west over whether he would take the job given the Bulldogs are in the midst of a rebuild. Should he get the nod, it would be no surprise if he looked in his current backyard for answers. Young five-eighth Matt Burton can’t get a look-in at Penrith at the moment but he is already on the Bulldogs’ radar and shapes as a potential solution to their attacking woes.

The club is also expected to receive a response from Canberra back Nick Cotric this week, although their hopes of signing the NSW player took a nosedive when the Raiders countered with a five-year offer.

The club is to make a decision as they prepare to face the only side they have beaten this season.

The Bulldogs beat St George Illawarra in round four, a game at the time that was billed as a coach-killer for the loser. Remarkably, Dragons coach Paul McGregor now looks the safer of the two.

The Bulldogs’ hopes of repeating that win look set to suffer another blow as centre Reimis Smith faces a charge for a shot that has sidelined Brisbane forward Alex Glenn for up to eight weeks.

“Unfortunately Alex sustained a high-grade MCL injury confirmed by an MRI this morning,” Broncos head of performance Paul Devlin said. “He is now in a knee brace to allow the ligament to heal and will be out of action for around six to eight weeks.”