- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
There’s two things that, as a coach, keep you in a job. First up, obviously, is winning. Winning cures all.
And if you can’t win, then you need to give the impression that you’re moving the team, whether that be to the fans or to the powers-that-be at the club.
The second bit is a bit more nebulous and subjective than the first – a win’s a win’s a win, right? – but it can buy enough time to move a team to the point where they turn the corner and become good again.
In a salary-capped comp like the NRL, that recovery is usually not that far away. Some sides perennially underperform – let’s not say who, but they play in the West and they dress like Tigers – and others perennial overperform, whether through culture – Melbourne – or largesse – the Roosters.
But for most everyone else, it’s a cycle of ups and downs. It’s a thought that fans should keep in mind when watching Cameron Ciraldo’s Baby Bulldogs at the moment.
More than most, Doggies fans know what a rebuild looks like. They’ve seen the false dawns before. But this one does look and feel different, with a new coach on a long term deal and a raft of rookies making their mark at first grade level.
It’s that which currently satisfies the second part of the coaching gambit. Fans tend to forgive poor results if they are accrued in the process of blooding new players, and clearly, that is what the Dogs are doing.
Despite adding some star power from the top of the NRL had of this year – notably Viliame Kikau and Reed Mahoney – Canterbury have been unable to kick on like most might have expected.
That’s largely been down to a huge injury crisis that left them struggling to so much as field a team at points earlier in the year.
But every in crisis is an opportunity – a crisitunity, as the great philosopher Homer put it – and Ciraldo certainly seems to be putting that idea to the test at the moment.
Last time Canterbury faced Cronulla – whom they will play this Sunday – they were in the depths of their injuries, but fielded a side that included Kyle Flanagan, Ryan Sutton, Josh Reynolds and Andrew Davey, all established first graders with plenty of experience.
Jacob Preston. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
That was in Round 8, and we are now in Round 16, where all four will miss out – indeed, Davey has left the club altogether.
In their place have come Karl Oloapu, Khaled Rajab, Harrison Edwards and Kurtis Morrin, who have fewer than 30 NRL appearances between them. They join Paul Alamoti and Jacob Preston, who made debuts this year and cemented spots in the side.
It’s a fair changing of the guard, and one that fans should get very excited about, because there’s serious precedent here.
If we look at the top of the NRL ladder, the top two places are clear examples of what can happen when the crisis leads to opportunity.
The Panthers, in first place, went through a similar phase in 2017 and 2018 under Anthony Griffin, when the likes of Jarome Luai, Moses Leota, Dylan Edwards, James Fisher-Harris and Kikau debuted.
They missed the finals altogether in 2019 – including a six game losing streak not unlike that which the Dogs endured this year – with a side that included 13 of the 17 that would win the 2021 Grand Final.
The Broncos scraped into the finals in 2019 then finished dead last in 2020, but across that period, blooded Payne Haas, Pat Carrigan, Herbie Farnworth, Jordan Riki and Kotoni Staggs.
The milestone, as far as junior coaches are concerned, is 50-75 games, or three full seasons, at which point it is clear whether a player is going to make it or not.
If they’re rep quality, they’ll probably have been picked by then, and if they make 75, there’s a very high chance they’ll go well beyond that.
Those five Broncos are all beyond that now – Staggs and Haas passed it last year – while the Panthers cohort came into that period around 2020, kicking off their reign of dominance in the NRL.
Under this logic, get booking the slap-up meal at Brothers Kebab in Belmore for early October 2025, because the Baby Bulldogs are coming.
Hayze Perham is tackled in Wollongong. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
Alright, it’s a little more complicated than that, and plenty of other things have to go well – but there is plenty of upside for a team with little to no experience going into plenty of NRL games as rank underdogs.
It’s also worth considering the importance of cohesion in building a successful team.
Former Wallabies international Ben Darwin, now an expert in sports cohesion with his own company, Gain Line Analytics, went into this with yours truly for Forbes, back in 2021, when the Broncos were dreadful and Queensland were getting destroyed by NSW.
Darwin compared the failing performances of Queensland teams at that time to the Iceland soccer team that shocked the world by defeating England in Euro 2016, explaining that teams playing together and staying together was vital, even in defeat.
“Failing together has the same effect as winning together,” he said. “It has the same impact. When we look at cohesion, we don’t look at where it comes from, in terms of did they win or did they lose.”
“Look at Iceland, and how much they lost through the juniors: as under-16s, under-18s and under-21s they were annihilated but when it came to play against England in the 2016 European Championships, their numbers were 220% higher than England’s. Those kids had basically never won anything, but cohesion doesn’t care.”
That hard data matches the anecdotal evidence of the Panthers and Broncos, who were rubbish in 2019 and 2021 respectively, but stuck tight with their young squads and reaped the benefits down the line.
One suspects that Ciraldo knows this to be true. The Dogs’ NSW Cup side is currently top of the ladder, and the likes of Reynolds, Sutton and Flanagan all played last week in a crushing 64-12 win over Parramatta’s reserve grade, as did Braidon Burns, Fa’amanu Brown and Jackson Topine.
Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo is interviewed. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
As there are six rookies in the top grade side, so another six first graders were down in reggies. Nobody would bat an eyelid if Ciraldo had stuck with the tried and tested, instead he has gone to the next generation.
It’s a cliche in coaching to say ‘trust the process’, but it’s clear that Ciraldo has one and is sticking to it. He’s not just throwing them in and hoping for the best, either.
No coach in the NRL would have had better cause to point to injuries as an excuse, but at no point in their casualty crisis did Ciraldo do so. Ditto inexperience, which would be an easy out for the coach.
Instead, he’s chucked players into grade and held them to that standard. What he says behind closed doors might be different, but the public face, at least, is consistent.
Reading the tea leaves at Belmore, this faith in youth is how things are going to be now, and that’s a good thing.
Under Trent Barrett, the Bulldogs were no fun to watch and, from the outside in, even less fun to play for. When Baz was axed, Mick Potter’s Dogs didn’t win a great deal more, but they were free-flowing and actually looked like they wanted to be there.
It was exactly what the club needed at the time, and while Potter never accepted that his focus was on attack over defence – and bristled when asked about it – part of his goal, clearly, was to make Belmore a fun place to play footy again.
He said he cared about winning and their poor defence harmed that, but nobody bought that argument. The style mattered too, perhaps even more than the result.
Now, with Potter still on board as an assistant, Ciraldo seems to have taken that to the next level.
The style is still there, with the Dogs consistently spreading the football and having a crack, but now they’re doing it with the lowest average age in the NRL.
Indeed, when friend of the column Rugby League Eye Test ran this data in Round 1, the Dogs had the sixth youngest lineup in his sample size, going back to 2014. Brisbane 2020 and Penrith 2017 were in there with the five above them.
Now, in Round 16, with the additions of the 18-year-old Oloapu and the 21-year-old Rajab, that will likely have dropped further, not to mention that both of those players are in the spine.
It’s things like this that keep fans engaged and coming back. Cliche as it is, ‘trust the process’ might be the buzzword that Bulldogs fans need. The team might well be going somewhere – and, for once, it might not be a false dawn.