D-Day for Pay as cellar-dwellers dream of brighter future
CANTERBURY coach Dean Pay has been calling for some clarity around his future and he could receive it as early as on Monday.
Chances are he won’t like what he hears.
The Bulldogs told Pay they would give him eight to 10 weeks to show them he was the coach to take the club into the future and the scoreboard would suggest he is on the thinnest of ice.
Nine games into the new season and the Bulldogs have won only once, their latest defeat among their most dire. The timing could not have been worse for Pay, who is off contract at the end of this year.
Pressure has been growing on the club to make a call on its future and it seems hard to believe that Pay has done enough to convince the club that he should be retained. They were never in the hunt against a Broncos outfit which has struggled badly this season. Brisbane didn’t show much at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night, but it showed enough to suggest the Bulldogs are bound for another wooden spoon.
Change is in the wind – Pay is likely to be given the chance to finish his contract and stay until the end of the season – both at the coaching level and amid the playing ranks. The incoming coach has some calls to make on the future of several players, most notably Kieran Foran, Aiden Tolman and Adam Elliott.
All are off contract and while the club has indicated a willingness to engage in contract talks with all three, it is yet to reach a breakthrough.
Hence the need to act and act quickly on the coaching position. Pay has won less than 40 per cent of his games in charge and while he has been lumbered with well-documented roster difficulties, the Bulldogs are a distant last.
Canterbury is two wins clear at the foot of the ladder approaching the midpoint of a shortened season. It has been linked with moves for Wayne Bennett and Craig Bellamy but Penrith assistant and former Manly coach Trent Barrett has emerged as the latest favourite.