The Dragons have been accused of overlooking a prime coaching candidate in Shane Flanagan after it was revealed Maroons coach Billy Slater turned down an approach from the club.
The Dragons board will meet on Tuesday to discuss potential candidates to replace Anthony Griffin, but Slater won’t be one of them after he ruled himself out of the running.
“The coaching situation is ongoing at the Dragons and they have cast the net far and wide for the potential Anthony Griffin replacement,” The Daily Telegraph’s Michael Carayannis said on NRL 360.
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“Dragons officials the last couple of weeks have picked up the phone to get a gauge on the interest levels of various candidates and one of those is Queensland coach Billy Slater.”
“And the response being?” Paul Kent asked.
“Thanks but no thank you,” Carayannis replied.
Kent believes the Dragons’ bold play for Slater was interesting given the club’s plans to go through a lengthy process to canvas candidates to be their next coach.
“It is an interesting one the fact that they have gone after Slater,” Kent said.
“They did say they are going through a process and get out there and go through a methodical order of who is available and what they can offer and then we find out today that they have had a sneaky little grab at Billy.”
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James Hooper commended the Dragons for looking for the best possible candidate, but believes Slater was never a realistic chance of joining the Dragons.
“You can’t knock them for shooting for the stars, but there is more chance of all of us becoming astronauts than it actually happening,” Hooper said.
“I think if Billy was to coach in the NRL it would be with the Melbourne Storm, but I don’t think there is any appetite at all for Billy to be an NRL head coach.”
Carayannis agreed the Dragons had to consider every potential candidate to do their due diligence in their search for a new coach.
“This is part of what they said they were going to do, they said they were going to gauge some potential candidates and look at who is available and I can’t fault them for just seeing if there was any interest from Billy,” Carayannis said.
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“It wasn’t like they formally offered him the job and said if you want it, it is yours. It was, Billy would you be interested? And word has come back no, thank you very much and they have moved on to other candidates.
“This is ahead of the board meeting next Tuesday where the board will be given a list of potential candidates that want the job and are interested in the job. From there they will work out what they are looking for in a coach.”
However, Kent believes the Dragons need to decide what sort of coach they need to turn things around at the struggling club.
“The Dragons haven’t articulated at least publicly what they are looking for in their next coach and what sort of coach they want,” Kent said.
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“We hear the Roosters and Trent Robinson talking about playing Roosters football. We know the style Wayne Bennett likes to play and with his style you know what you are going to get.”
“We don’t know with the Dragons what they want their football team to look like.”
Hooper believes former Sharks premiership winning coach and current Manly assistant Shane Flanagan is the ideal candidate, but a key board member is standing in the way.
“There is a blatantly obvious candidate staring them in the face and he has been within the four walls of the organisation a couple of times over the course of the last few years, it’s Shane Flanagan,” Hooper said.
“He was the assistant there with Paul McGregor then he took over recruitment for a number of months last season.
“There are people within the Dragons who were super impressed with Flanagan. He knows what success looks like. He knows how successful clubs should be run.
“The stumbling block is Peter Doust on the board, who is a Dragons aligned board member. He thinks that Flanno’s sins of the past and his rap sheet means he shouldn’t be listed as a candidate, which a lot of people at the club disagree with.”
Kent believes Flanagan has paid for his mistakes in the past and should be free to coach a team in the NRL again and the Dragons would be mad not to consider him.
“The thing with Shane Flanagan is we know what happened and he has served his time with five years out of the game,” Kent said.
“It is time to move on. He has done his time the right way and he is allowed back by the NRL, so why shouldn’t he be able to coach a club? The club shouldn’t be making some moral stance there.
“Flanagan took over Cronulla when they were 14th. In six years he had taken that team with no dominant CEO to get out in the market and do some clever negotiations to get players to the club and without a dominant head of football, he ran the roster and ran the salary cap.
“His talent identification and his roster management was pitch perfect and he took them from 14th to a premiership.
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“There are very few coaches anywhere in the game that are capable of that and if you are a club like St George Illawarra right now, that is the situation you are in.
“You are sitting down the bottom of the NRL ladder wondering how you are going to go north?”
“Shane Flanagan was doing it all and he took the Sharks to a premiership. I don’t know why the Dragons sit there and wonder why isn’t he on the list?”
Hooper clarified that Flanagan may well be a candidate come Tuesday’s board meeting, but Doust would need to change his mind for him to become the coach.
“He may well make the list, but where it could become an impediment is Peter Doust and it has to be unanimous,” Hooper explained.
“All eight board members have to agree on who the coach is going to be. It won’t be selected by the CEO and at this point in time Doust is absolutely a no vote.”
