DEAN Pay's treatment at the hands of 'the family club' should be a cautionary tale for anyone out there with ambitions of being a head coach, which is admittedly not many of us.
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What Pay endured has been well fleshed out. He was basically put in charge of the Washington Generals and sacked for not winning. He did it all on the promise he'd eventually be coaching the Globetrotters.
He didn't get that chance, the chance others like Brad Arthur has had at the Eels since taking over from Ricky Stuart in 2014. The Eels ran 10th, 12th and 14th in his first three seasons.
They were top four in 2017 but picked up the wooden spoon a year later. In that time he dealt with huge roster turnover and a salary cap sanction. There were factors at play the limited his chances. The Eels stuck solid and this year they're a genuine premiership contender.
Pay wasn't given the that shot and walked before he was pushed - what choice did he have when the club was openly pursuing a replacement. Trent Barrett all but certain to be that replacement, though there's a fair few wise voices out there saying he should approach with caution.
Kickoff once spoke to a bloke currently in that 'head coach in waiting' cluster that gets rolled out whenever a coach is under the pump. His ambitions were genuine, but he was firmly of the view you need to take the right job and not the first one.
That was the approach Craig Bellamy famously took when, as the most in-demand assistant coach in the game, he was offered the Wests Tigers gig. He knocked it back but liked what he saw at Melbourne. The rest is (illustrious) history.
The Dogs wouldn't be Barrett's first job but is it the right one?
It's an old suggestion that you only get one shot at it. It used to be the case but, at the rate they're being fired, coaches can probably expect a couple. Club boards sack coaches to ease pressure on themselves and then simply go back to same well.
A look across the current NRL coaching ranks looks something like the cork board in a crime movie, the one where the detectives put the persons of interest up and link them together with different coloured pieces of string. Even the shrewdest of detectives would struggle to make sense of the current board.
Barrett is likely to take over at the Bulldogs after parting ways with Manly where he also dealt with salary cap issues that limited his recruiting ability. He was replaced by Des Hasler who was sacked by the Bulldogs and replaced by Pay who inherited an absolute mess.
To do that, Barrett will depart Penrith where he's currently an assistant to Ivan Cleary. Of course Cleary in his second stint as Penrith coach after he was fired for Anthony Griffin, who was subsequently fired for Cleary.
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Two weeks ago Cleary was blowing kisses at Tigers fans angry at the state in which he left the roster Michael Maguire is currently tasked with rebuilding.
Maguire joined the Tigers after he was sacked from the Rabbitohs for Anthony Seibold. Seibold then left the Rabbitohs to replace Wayne Bennett at the Broncos who then replaced him at the Rabbitohs.
The Broncos are at their lowest ebb as a club, so much so there was talk of bringing in Stephen Kearney as an assistant - he had free time because he just got sacked by the Warriors.
The Warriors are on the lookout for a replacement and were reportedly keen on Nathan Brown who has a reputation as a club-builder. He earned that reputation for putting together the nucleus of the roster Wayne Bennett eventually got over the premiership hump.
Brown then took over at Newcastle after Bennett departed, leaving a roster not all that dissimilar to the one Pay has had at the Bulldogs. Brown rebuilt the Knights and put together the side Adam O'Brien is taking to top four calculations.
Brown certainly seems the coach to follow and O'Brien seems to have taken the shrewd advice about picking the right job and not the first one that comes up.
He probably learned that from Bellamy, who is not only the best coach in the game but the best coach of coaches. O'Brien, Seibold, Kearney, Brown, Maguire, Arthur are all graduates of the Storm school.
Other clubs have clamoured for their services in the hope that some of the fairy dust has rubbed off. It has to some degree but, in terms of sustained success, it rubs off again pretty quickly.
Little wonder head coaches 'in waiting' like Craig Fitzgibbon and Jason Ryles are in no hurry to leave their current roles. There's so little rhyme or reason as to why coaches are hired, and even less to why they're fired.
And clubs had the gall to point fingers at NRL HQ over finances and lack of consultation when the rug was pulled out by COVID-19 earlier this year... SMH as the kids say on the interwebs.
All of the above is enough to send you cross-eyed. It's a quagmire that Dragons coach Paul McGregor, ironically, wasn't all that keen on jumping into back when he took over from Steve Price.
At the time he said he always wanted to be involved in NRL footy but "never as a head coach." That changed, but more a result of passion for the club than anything else.
It was in your columnist's first couple of months with this masthead McGregor was in that 'future head coach' cluster. He said then that he wasn't looking at being a career coach in that sense.
"I'm red and white mate," he said. "I come in here every day and I'm passionate about what I do. I don't think I'd have that anywhere else."
For better or worse, it's always been about the club not keeping his job. He said it after the win over the Sea Eagles "it's not about me."
It looked like that tenure could end after a loss to the Bulldogs in round four. He fronted up and said he wasn't a quitter. The board met and decided to back him. The question they seemed to ask was what would sacking him achieve?
It would appease fans but, other than that, the answer's not much. Would the Dragons be in a better position now, with an interim coach? I guess we can look at how the Dogs go for the rest of this year with Steve Georgallis for an answer.
There's something to be said for avoiding the madness.