If you had picked up a Sydney newspaper in the last week, you would have concluded that Trent Barrett was a coaching genius.
The current Parramatta caretaker has been in PR overdrive, lobbying for a full-time position with the Eels as the club considers a long list of contenders to succeed the recently fired Brad Arthur. The former St George Illawarra, Wigan, New South Wales, and Australia playmaker was one of the finest of his era as a player – some could call him genius – but in the coaching box, throughout three tenure, he has unable to recreate that form.
Barrett, now 46, has been a disaster as a coach, with a poor spell at Manly compounded by an all-timer of a bad spell at Canterbury Bulldogs that saw him sacked less than three months into the 2022 season with just five wins in 34 matches.
This wasn’t the story in the papers, however. The Daily Telegraph, Sydney’s biggest tabloid, splashed several times, including over a two page spread on Saturday – featuring exclusives with current players – on why Barrett was the guy to get the job full-time.
Obviously, given that he is now selecting the team, Parra’s players are unlikely to say he is bad, but the concept that those being coached get to choose their own boss is obviously ridiculous.
If that influences decision-making at the Eels for a second, the lunatics have effectively taken over the asylum. The media’s decision to print these stories is not their fault; in fact, it makes perfect sense.
Parramatta is a large club with a strong fanbase, one of the greatest around, and Barrett is a polarizing character likely to attract interest.
There are other contenders in the race, but few are free to speak with the media, and just one, Barrett, is actually required to appear in front of press conferences every week so that journalists can ask him questions.
Only Jason Demetriou, the former Souths coach who was fired earlier this year, and Michael Cheika, the famed rugby union coach who guided Lebanon to the previous Rugby League World Cup, are currently unemployed and can be considered as options.
Every other figure, including John Hannay (Cronulla), Jason Ryles (Melbourne), and Brian McDermott (Newcastle), is a current assistant coach who does not have to do media and would merely state they are focused on their current job anyhow.
But that Barrett has got such a run speaks to a cognitive dissonance at the heart of NRL coaching – and one that both holds back clubs and negatively impacts British coaches.
The day after Arthur was sacked, Parramatta CEO Jim Sarantinos fronted the media and explicitly said that his preferred candidate would be “someone who’s been involved in a winning program and someone who’s been around a high-performing culture” Trent Barrett – career winning record: 32% – certainly isn’t that. He is, however, a known figure with a lot of contacts and a very powerful agent, therefore always likely to get a good run.
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This is par for the course in the Sydney rugby league goldfish bowl, where an approved list of coaches are able to get jobs time and again based on being a known quantity and a decent bloke. Barrett has already done this once before: he got the Bulldogs gig despite a shocking record at Manly that saw him finish second-last with a roster that included Daly Cherry-Evans, Addin Fonua-Blake, Api Koroisau and both Trbojevics.
At Canterbury, he was an unmitigated disaster, as proven not only by his record but also by how quickly the team improved once he was sacked: having won twice in nine games and never scored more than 16 points in a match, the Bulldogs won five under caretaker coach Mick Potter and barely dipped below 16 for the rest of the season. There was a peculiar moment late in his tenure where Barrett was grilled over his decision to select Kyle Flanagan, son of Shane Flanagan, with rumours that Phil Gould, the Dogs’ Head of Football, had gone over his head.
All four characters share the same player manager, Wayne Beavis, but that passed without comment. Anthony Griffin, who was sacked last year from the Dragons after a horrendous tenure, is another Beavis client who was rewarded for mediocrity.
He got the Penrith job after two disastrous years with a stacked Brisbane side, failed spectacularly, and then got the St George Illawarra job regardless.
He was fired and then featured as a commentator on Fox League just a few weeks later. Shane Flanagan, who took over at the Dragons in 2024, gave up a spot in the commentary box to do so.
Flanagan, who previously won a Premiership with Cronulla, has quickly strengthened the club, demonstrating that recycling can work if the proper person is recycled.
This isn’t a criticism on Beavis, who is clearly doing his job exactly as he should in the interests of his clients, but rather a question of why clubs choose to make stupid judgments repeatedly when
there are plenty of options available to them McDermott was at least interviewed for the Parramatta job – closer than any British coach has got to an NRL gig in years, if not decades – which is the bare minimum he should get given his stellar CV in the UK and immediate impact on Newcastle since arriving last year.
Lee Briers, far and away the most impactful NRL assistant coach, might have had a chance but has instead opted to go to South Sydney to work with the incoming Wayne Bennett. That someone like Steve McNamara, the standout coach in the Super League, wasn’t even close to any of the jobs that have come up in recent years speaks to the close-mindedness and inefficiencies in hiring processes.
There is no inclination that he wants to leave Catalans or has proactively done anything to link himself with jobs in Australia, but if he was Australian, he would have been asked multiple times by clubs.
Super League fans will not need McNamara’s record explaining to them, but as a UK-raised coach with no agent in Australia (or anywhere), he’s not close to a conversation.
McDermott only got an interview because he’s an NRL assistant and you can guarantee that if he was still based in Europe, he wouldn’t have been close no matter how many championships there are on his CV.
Matty Peet, who has won literally everything available, is far more qualified than any of the Australian candidates for the Parra job, as is Shaun Wane. Neither would likely leave current roles, but the question wasn’t asked anyway. It is telling that Sam Burgess has been the English coach with the most links to an Australian job despite his lack of experience compared to other candidates, but his familiarity to club bosses ensured that his name appeared regularly.
That no club will take the plunge is ironic given the success of ex-Super League coaches in the NRL and the fact that the most successful coaching appointment of recent years has been one totally out of left-field.
Both Michael Maguire and Trent Robinson, plus last year’s Grand Finalist Kevin Walters, cut their teeth in the Super League and transitioned well to the NRL.
Kristian Woolf will do so next year, while Justin Holbrook, who was fired by the Titans, actually improved his reputation in the process and will return to head coaching sooner rather later. It makes sense to turn to the Super League: just 29 people may coach in professional rugby league at any given moment, and 12 of them are in that competition, so neglecting that skill pool is completely illogical.
Furthermore, while the weekly standards for players fluctuate across the two competitions, the coaching level may be the most similar.
A head coach’s skills, including tactics, salary cap management, and player interactions, are completely portable. The finest preparation for becoming a head coach.
is being the head coach rather than an assistant at another club. When a team recently took a chance on an unknown, they were rewarded handsomely: Andrew Webster was hired by the Warriors and earned Coach of the Year in his first season.
He was aided, incidentally, by two former Super League head coaches, Justin Morgan and Richard Agar, as well as Stacey Jones, the former Warriors head coach.
The NRL’s coaching recruitment process is patently inefficient, and any club that deviates from it stands a good chance of striking gold.
It’s a glass ceiling for British coaches, as well as anyone with a new approach to the game. When you recycle coaches, you recycle ideas, which stifles
innovation. Parramatta’s interest in Barrett demonstrates the type of thinking that is common in the NRL. Supporters can only hope that someone else interviewed well enough that he isn’t awarded the position and a better candidate is picked.
However, make no mistake: there will be more vacancies, and the same faces will appear again. British coaches are in the forefront of these inefficiencies, but they are far from the only ones.
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