As far as twice-sacked coaches go, his record is as good as it gets. Six finals appearances in seven seasons - if you include 2018 where the Panthers reached week two of the playoffs just a month after controversially showing him the door.

Overall, it's a career in which he's demonstrably won more games than he's lost (a win percentage of 54 per cent). It made the assumption he'd get another go at it a sound one. He's dipped his toe into the media over the past two years but, as he said on Thursday, the football paddock is where he really belongs.

"As I said when I got the job, I was always confident I'd get back into a position like this and it's great to be coaching a club like the Dragons," Griffin said.

"It's nice being out on the field again, coaching again. I've been coaching for over 20 years in some form or another. You're always looking to learn and trying to improve yourself, that's something I'm passionate about, but in terms of my own identity or authenticity, I'm the same person I was.

"My first impressions are its a really good club with really good people who are desperate to do well. At the moment we're in a pretty good space but obviously, going on our last couple of years, there's a lot of improvement [necessary]."

And therein lies the major question. Of all three gigs he's had in the NRL, his current one is unquestionably the toughest, with the Dragons putting their faith in him to pull the club out of the doldrums after featuring in the finals just twice in the past nine years.

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While he's been keen to avoid dreaded 'rebuilding phase' terminology, he's awake to reality that there is no quick fix.

"It's a club that's finished bottom four two years in a row so there's obviously a lot of things that need to be better, that doesn't all come down to the coach," Griffin said.

"Obviously that's the first person most clubs change when things aren't going well but it comes down to a whole lot of things across the whole club. I've only been here for a month so I haven't got all the answers just yet but there's clearly a lot of things we need to improve on to get back in the fight to win a competition.

"Everything's fixable, there's cycles that happen in football and sometimes clubs just get it wrong or, for whatever reason, things don't go their way. You've just got to look at Brisbane now, if you'd said three years ago Brisbane were going to be wooden-spooners you would've got laughed at.

"The rugby league world is a volatile world and things can change really quickly. I'm not sure what's happened here in the past, I'm not really concerned with that, all I know is theres a lot of improvement in the place and I'm just focused on playing my role in making sure we do everything we can to get ourselves back up the ladder."

The most pressing question on-field is how Griffin can unlock the potential of halves pair Ben Hunt and Corey Norman - players he first coached in Brisbane as teenagers.

The pair have been two of the most heavily scrutinised players in the competition for form not matching their hefty pay packets, while there's already clamour for future star Jayden Sullivan to be given the keys next season. Griffin's yet to form a view on it, but one thing he has determined is that he won't make the call based on the salary cap.

"I don't know what they're worth and doesn't bother me what they're worth, it's what they can do for the team," Griffin said.

"Everyone's training really well so they'll all get their chance in time. I haven't worked with him for seven years but I think Ben's got a lot more potential in him to unlock and he knows that.

"Hard work, honesty, leadership, all those things that have got to be important to him if he's going to have a serious crack. Everyone here wouldn't be happy with what's happened the last couple of years so hopefully I'll be able to help him do that.

"He can obviously play a few positions but, for anyone in the team, it's got to be important to them to be team first. Corey Norman's been really good which they need to be. The last couple of years hasn't been where the club wanted to be so a few of them have got to find a little bit more."