Gus: How Dragons burned two talented coaches

Phil Gould has warned the Dragons not to repeat a mistake that they've made several times in the past as they take up the search for a new head coach for 2021.

Gould revealed last week that he felt Paul McGregor's axing was inevitable after his eyes were opened to the major flaws of the club's football department during a post-season review last year.

He said the scope of the review did not allow the club to make the changes needed to reverse their fortunes, leading McGregor down a treacherous path that ultimately resulted in his sacking.

Already a long list of candidates have been linked to the job which opens at the end of this season after Dean Young was promoted from within the club on an interim basis to see out the season.

One of the favoured candidates is Craig Fitzgibbon, a champion former player who started his career at the Illawarra Steelers in 1998 and played one season with the St George Illawarra join venture in 1999 before moving on to the Roosters.

Fitzgibbon is widely viewed as the brightest talent in the NRL's assistant coaching ranks, and is currently serving as a protege to Roosters super-coach Trent Robinson.

He has committed to staying with the Roosters for at least one more season after this one, making it highly unlikely he would take the Dragons job, but even if he was available Gould said he wouldn't be the silver bullet some people are making him out to be.

In fact Gould claimed the Dragons had burned talented young coaches twice in recent history, with first Nathan Brown then McGregor set up for failure due to the lack of experience on their support staff.

"You need a team and you can't have a team of rookies," Gould told Wide World of Sports' The Final Whistle.

"I think that's where the Dragons made their mistake years ago with McGregor, and they made the same mistake with Nathan Brown, when Paul McGregor took over everyone was rookies.

"All the staff were rookies. Head coach was a rookie, assistants were rookies, strength and conditioning was a rookie and they made a lot of mistakes over four or five years.

"They changed their mind and kept changing their ways the whole time looking for a solution."

The Brown comparison is an interesting one and Wayne Bennett has always given him plenty of credit for putting together a team that was capable of winning a premiership. Bennett just put the finishing touches on.

Brown was just 30 when he took over from Andrew Farrar as Dragons' head coach in 2003. He took them to within one game of the grand final in 2006 but by April 2008 he was told his time at the club was up.

Bennett took the job in 2009 and led the club to its first premiership as a joint venture the following season.

That hire was the only time the Dragons have brought in an experienced coach in the last two decades and it underlines a belief that Gould has always followed when he's hired a coach.

"It's hard for a club in a position of buying a head coach, and I've only been in this position a couple of times," Gould said.

"I always went for an experienced head coach, someone who had been through it before, and then tried to support them with really good assistant coaches, cause it's the assistant coaches who have a relationship with the players, they're coaching the football."

Fitzgibbon is likely to continue fielding head coaching offers until he takes one and Gould urged him to nail his decision the first time.

He said finding a club that could put the right support in place was vital.

Fitzgibbon the coach to fix Dragons: Joey

"Craig Fitzgibbon is if he takes on a head coach role who becomes his Craig Fitzgibbon? Who becomes his assistant coach?" Gould asked

"If you look at the top sides in the competition at the moment, or the ones who are performing well, they've got the best assistant coaches, they've got the best strength and conditioning coaches, that's where you've got to get it right, in your assistants and how you delegate and your strength and conditioning coaches.

"That's the key to success. All these good assistant coaches, when they get into a head coach role, unless they can find someone like themselves to assist them, they find they're doing it all themselves, they spread themselves too thin, they start doing too much and then they get distracted from what they're trying to do."