NRL: On Face to Face, New Zealand's Tawera Nikau sits down with Jake Duke to recount his early career days under Gus Gould.
Gus’ masterplan began with a secret Maccas meeting followed by a ruthless choice If an NRL coaching job were to become vacant tomorrow, any fan could rattle off the top 10 contenders.
Why? Because they’ve been tossed up for every other job that has opened in the last few years. It is a recycled mixture of sacked coaches, young assistants, and maybe even a commentator thrown in for good measure. Watch every game of every round of the NRL Premiership LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on FOX LEAGUE, available on Kayo Sports |It wasn’t always the case.
When Parramatta beat the Dogs recently, it was a reunion of the premiership team, and it got me thinking about John Monie. Around my neck of the woods, Monie is a legend—in fact, his entire family is. John was a class player for my hometown, Woy Woy, and coached the club to many premierships. He was also a surfer of note who was out tackling big waves in Hawaii long before it was common practice.
John played at Cronulla from 1968 to 1970, which is where he first met Jack Gibson. Jack was famous for keeping tabs on talent, whether it was players, horses, or coaches. A decade later, he employed Monie to be his assistant at Parramatta for the 1981, 1982, and 1983 premierships. Monie then took the reins himself and coached the Eels to the 1986 title.
Gibson was once asked why he’d tapped a surfer from the Central Coast to help him run a dynasty. His answer was pure Jack: “He’s got a good eye for a player, he doesn’t talk a lot of rubbish, and he’s not afraid of the heavy lifting. ” That is what I call doing due diligence—ten years of recon. What Jack saw in Monie all those decades ago, Phil Gould saw in Cameron Ciraldo.
While most clubs just call the last coach sacked, the best ones actually put thought into the process. Gus first met Ciraldo at a Gosford McDonald’s back in 2011 to bring him to Penrith as a player. He didn’t just watch him on the field; he watched him after he retired, when Ciraldo would show up at Patrician Brothers Blacktown just to watch the junior reps train without being asked.
Gus kept tabs on that “genuine love for the game” for over a decade before finally handing him the keys at Belmore. It wasn’t a snap decision based on who was available; it was a long-term plan. As Gus put it when the appointment was questioned: “I invested in Cameron as a person long before he became a coach. It was never a risk in my mind whatsoever.
” The Cameron Ciraldo story at Belmore didn’t begin with game plans; it began with a choice between two legacies. Ciraldo looked at a once-proud powerhouse that had become a doormat and realized he had two paths: the flamboyant “Entertainers” of the eighties, or the tough, relentless style of the nineties—the Dogs of War. He chose War. He walked into a club where losing had become a habit and standards had slipped.
He didn’t come in with a magic wand; he came in with a demand for honesty. As Ciraldo put it earlier this year, “I just want players who compete. I want them to go out there, work harder than everyone else and just do their job. ” He inherited a roster and immediately began weeding out anyone who wasn’t willing to commit to the cause.
Phil Gould and Cameron Ciraldo during their time at Penrith Panthers, pictured at Homebush. Credit:NRL PhotosCiraldo didn’t flinch. He knew that to fix the culture, he had to be ruthless. That ruthlessness bought him a 2025 season where the Dogs finally looked like they belonged back at the big table, but the 2026 campaign is proving that culture only gets you so far.
The reality of Ciraldo’s “mobility” bet is being laid bare. He gambled on a lighter, faster pack that could hunt in the line for 80 minutes, and it worked—so much so that teams began to copy the lightweight middle model. But in the NRL, the use of the word “but” means a weakness has been found. For Ciraldo, his pack is fit, and they scramble until their lungs burn—but they can’t win the collision with the ball.
When you trade mass for mobility, you lose the ability to bend the line. They are winning the fitness battle but losing the play-the-ball. The 32-12 loss to the Broncos last week was the ultimate reality check. Brisbane turned up at Suncorp missing Payne Haas, Patrick Carrigan, and Reece Walsh, yet the Bulldogs still couldn’t generate enough punch.
The lopsided stats tell the story: the Bulldogs’ back five, led by Connor Tracey , are ranked 1st in the league for running metres, yet the team as a whole sits at the bottom for post-contact metres. Against the Broncos, the starting middles managed less than 40 post-contact metres between them.
When forwards record zero tackle breaks and log nearly 50 passes before the line instead of winning the collision, the play-the-ball speed slows to a crawl. That is where the focus shifts. When the ruck isn’t controlled by the attack, the pressure on playmakers like Lachlan Galvin and Matt Burton becomes suffocating. As they head into Friday night at Accor Stadium against the North Queensland Cowboys, the mission changes.
They won’t have the luxury of their usual size and power, with Viliame Kikau and Max King watching from the sidelines. To make matters more interesting, they have to deal with a familiar face in Reed Mahoney. After falling out of favour and being benched during the 2025 finals run, Mahoney returns to his old stomping ground with plenty to prove.
He recently admitted he had to “look at himself in the mirror” after his messy exit from Canterbury, noting that at the Cowboys, it is “nice to feel wanted again. ” Mahoney thrives in the chaos of a tight ruck—bringing that signature “PHD” in getting under teams’ skin. He’ll be looking to exploit the very mobility model that saw him moved on, but Ciraldo knows that Mahoney’s greatest strength is also his biggest liability.
The Dogs know exactly which buttons to push, and they know that when Mahoney loses his discipline, he hurts his team more than the opposition. Ciraldo isn’t guessing here. He knows the model works because we’ve already seen the ceiling this year. Just a few weeks ago in Round 6, the Bulldogs dismantled an unbeaten Penrith side 32-16.
That night, the lightweight middle didn’t just scramble—they dominated. The intensity is always there, but against the Panthers, they got the order of operations right: they ran hard first and passed second. They won the collision, generated massive post-contact metres, and dictated the play-the-ball speed against the gold standard of the league. That win was the blueprint.
It proved that when they commit to winning the dirtiest part of the play first, the Bulldogs don’t need to be the biggest team in the room to be the most dangerous. The Broncos loss wasn’t a failure of effort; it was a failure to earn the right to play. They got caught up in the finesse of the mobility model and forgot that “War” starts with a shoulder to the chest.
We all saw what Gibson’s diligence did at Parramatta. The Dogs are hoping history repeats at Belmore. Ciraldo has already shown he isn’t interested in excuses. He knows his system is built on more than just personnel; it’s built on the standard he set when he first walked through the doors.
He’s seen what happens when they win the ruck; now he just needs to make that physical dominance a habit. Michael Crawley has worked as an assistant coach at the Raiders, Knights and Cowboys as well as a coaching consultant with the Dragons.
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