Why do the Raiders stick with Ricky? Musings on coach job-security

It’s always fun to indulge in a bit of schadenfreude, so let’s talk about sacking coaches.

This season has been relatively quiet on the coach-sacking front, primarily because we’ve got such an unexpected ladder at the halfway mark of the season.

As a result, there’s a decent chance we’ll see the regular season out without a single sacking.

But that’s no fun. Instead, let’s put all 16 NRL coaches into categories based on the likelihood of them getting booted before the finals series begins.

Obviously safe as houses
First off, let’s rule out the guys who – barring some kind of disaster or scandal of their own making – simply aren’t in the conversation for losing their job.

Craig Bellamy, Shane Flanagan and Trent Robinson are good as gold – not only have they recently won premierships, they’ve got their teams humming along in the top eight. A combination of track record, current ladder standing and respect of their dressing room means they’re fine.

I had a whole argument ready to go about how Wayne Bennett was in trouble if Bellamy signed with the Broncos for next season and Benny’s boys stopped playing for him, but with reports out of Melbourne suggesting Bellamy is staying put, Bennett isn’t going anywhere either.

Oddly enough, the boss of one wooden-spoon fancies, North Queensland, is similarly safe. The Cowboys rate Paul Green enough to have signed him on a fat deal only two months ago, so he’s not going anywhere… this year.

Anthony Seibold has South Sydney playing like the team they’ve threatened to be since their 2014 premiership triumph – and during his first year holding a clipboard – so he’s sleeping easy.

Ivan Cleary took on the poison chalice that is the Wests Tigers, but has the team playing with pride again. And, let’s be honest, their chances of signing Nathan Cleary hinge on his dad being the coach.

I’m not saying it’s the only reason he’s safe – Ivan clearly knows his stuff – but Nathan’s signature is a mighty fine carrot for the club to keep Ivan on the books.

(AAP Image/Paul Miller)

Finally, while the blowtorch was on all three ahead of this season, Paul McGregor, Anthony Griffin and Stephen Kearney respectively have the Dragons, Panthers and Warriors in great shape. They’ll see 2018 out.

Okay, boring stuff out of the way, let’s get into who’s head is potentially on the chopping block – and to what degree.

Likely safe, but stranger things have happened…
This week, the Knights announced they had extended Nathan Brown’s contract, with a view to making him the club’s longest-serving coach, so it would appear he’s going to be fine.

However, the structure of his contract puts the slightest bit of scrutiny over him.

Brown is now on an open-ended deal, with set payout amounts factored in should he be regarded as surplus to requirement.

Now, the Knights have been decimated by injury to key players, yet they are having their best season in years – but all that really means is they’re not planted firmly to the bottom of the ladder.

So while it isn’t likely to happen – not the way the Eels, Sea Eagles and Cowboys are playing – were Newcastle to see the wheels fall off and be headed towards a third consecutive wooden spoon with a few weeks to go, you’d have to think the club would activate the payout clause in Brown’s contract.

Garth Brennan is making a decent fist of things on the Gold Coast Titans, with his side still a shot at making the eight.

What’s more, with the club having sacked and paid out their last coach, and Brennan only in his first year, it would surely take something pretty drastic for the rookie coach to be shown the door.

Of course, this is the club that backed an underperforming player on big money rather than support their coach last year, leading to Neil Henry to cop the sack, only for Jarryd Hayne to decide he was leaving too.

This club is a coach killer, so Garth isn’t quite safe just yet.

Another coach who’s lucky (depending on your point of view) enough to be in his first year is Dean Pay, who is starting to remind me of Nathan Brown in 2016.

(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

Pay has inherited an ageing side with a small group of players on massive contracts, and a few more having theirs back-ended, meaning while the club struggled to fit under the cap this season, the side they’re fielding are running second-last.

The poor bloke is now tasked with putting a broom through the joint and rebuilding, which is going to take – as we’ve seen in the Hunter – at least three years, probably longer.

Again, being a first-year coach who took over from a bloke who was unceremoniously cut and may yet receive a seven-figure payout, the Dogs will be hesitant to dump Pay without giving him a fair go.

But this is a club that demands success. How long they’ll put up with being at the back end of proceedings remains to be seen.

The men most likely
Brad Arthur has the biggest target on his back at the moment.

After 2016 was decimated by the club’s salary cap scandal, throughout which Arthur stood tall to hold things together, the Eels were a top-four side last year and the only team that pushed Melbourne in the finals.

So 2018 was supposed to be their year, yet they’re languishing at the bottom of the ladder.

Losing Semi Radradra was obviously a big blow, and injuries haven’t helped, but the whispers that the team’s halves don’t get along and – more worryingly – that Arthur has lost the dressing room have the coach in the hot seat.

The finals are a pipe dream this year, but a strong back-end of the season would save Arthur’s job. However, a guaranteed wooden spoon before August is out and he’ll be yet another coaching casualty at Parramatta.

Trent Barrett was reportedly being told by those close to him at the start of the season to walk away from his gig at the Sea Eagles.

(Photo by Jason O’Brien/Getty Images)

Between the salary cap drama hindering his ability to sign players, the biffo between club captain Daly Cherry-Evans and youngster Jackson Hastings, then injuries cleaning out his already relatively bare cupboards, there were fears Barrett’s career as a coach would come to a premature end if he stuck things out.

Basically, quitting would have been regarded as an act of self-preservation. But he stood up at the start of May and declared he wasn’t going anywhere, which the players, fans, and board must have deeply appreciated.

Then with a pair of wins over the Broncos and Storm in the following weeks, suddenly everything looked rosy on the Northern Beaches.

But Manly have since copped four losses on the trot to sit third-last, just one win clear of the Eels.

It probably didn’t help matters when former club champion Anthony Watmough came out this week and declared Cherry-Evans to be “a f***wit” who “has probably p***ed one too manly people off in the game”.

Sure, he’s not slamming Barrett – just the man Barrett decided was the best candidate to lead the club on and off the field.

(Just quietly, that’s what rugby league punditry should all be about – people talk about how refreshingly honest Paul Gallen is, but I’m yet to hear him brand a single former teammate as a “f***wit”.)

For all these off-field issues, no team containing DCE, the Trbojevic brothers and Martin Taupau – with a smattering of current and former rep players in there for good measure – should be playing this badly.

(Photo by Jason McCawley/Getty Images)

Barrett’s saving grace may simply be that the board really are as dysfunctional as the papers suggest.

Finally, we come to Ricky Stuart.

He’s one of Canberra’s favourite sons, but while the Raiders were the surprise packets of 2016, the last two seasons they have forgotten how to win, with a seeming inability to close out tight scorelines.

They’ve got a talented roster, arguably a better one than 2016, which must make the losses all the more frustrating for their fans.

But perhaps the most ominous prospect for Stuart is his employers taking the time to look back at his record.

Because, while he did win a premiership in his first season as an NRL coach, the intervening 16 years have been pretty tumultuous.

He was sacked by the Roosters, quit the Sharks in acrimonious circumstances, then left the Eels in the lurch after one season in Parramatta, during which time he obliterated their roster and led them to a wooden spoon.

None of which would matter if he was getting results on the field, but since his run of three straight grand finals with the Roosters in his first three years at the helm, he’s taken his teams to the playoffs just twice: with Cronulla in 2008 and Canberra in 2016.

That means in 13 completed seasons, Stuart’s teams have played September footy on just five occasions. By comparison, his sides have collected one wooden spoon and run second-last three times.

Basically, a Stuart-coached side is almost as likely to finish in the bottom two as the top eight and far more likely to miss the finals than play in them.

He’s rarely mentioned as having his head on the chopping block, but unless he can get the green machine into finals contention by season’s end, surely his role would have to come under scrutiny?