Legend leaves hole at ‘Phins
GOLD Coast Dolphins president Jeff Pfaff is hopeful the club can nail down a replacement for outgoing coach Damian Wallis within the next month.
With Wallis on Monday announcing he would step down as head coach after five years, the Dolphins have been left to fill the shoes of arguably their greatest servant.
Wallis, who has played for the club since 1993, was assisted by former English first class player Simon Cusden and Peter Ford in 2017-18 but Pfaff said the committee could call for coaching expressions of interest as early as next week.
“We’d like to (find a replacement soon) because we start early. Our first game will be the first weekend of September so pretty much end of June, start of July will be the start of pre-season and we’ll have trial games through August, so we don’t want to leave it too long,” Pfaff said.
“What we usually do anyway at the end of our year is pull in the feedback from players and from Queensland Cricket, so we sit down and have a bit of a review of how the coaching of the cricket program has gone.
“We’ll probably put out expressions of interest with a pretty short closing date and then sit down at the end of the month and plan (everything). We’ve got guys in the coaching system who will keep going and then it’s just a matter of finding the right roles and seeing what else is out there in regards to interest to getting involved with the Dolphins.”
Pfaff said he was open to the idea of bringing in a coach from outside the club.
“As long as they’re aligned (with our culture) I don’t think it would matter. We have a performance-based culture, we don’t make promises on where guys play and we don’t pay players so as long as someone can be aligned to that and continue the good work laid by Damian and others.
“We’re always happy for fresh ideas as well, no one ever has the right answer 100 per cent of the time.”