Speculation continues to link Smith with Knights job
Email Print Normal font Large font By Greg Prichard and Brett Keeble
March 7, 2006
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AdvertisementTHE potential for a union between Newcastle and coach Brian Smith next year has increased, with sources claiming Smith was due to meet a Knights representative for talks last night.
Michael Hagan will finish up as Newcastle coach at the end of the season and take over from Smith at Parramatta next year. It was revealed last week that the Knights have a keen interest in Smith.
Asked yesterday if he was prepared to confirm that a meeting had been scheduled with Newcastle, Smith once again was not prepared to offer any insight into his future. "I'm not saying anything about anything," he said.
Knights chief executive Ken Conway and chairman Michael Tyler also retained their consistency in refusing to provide any leads when asked if Smith was to meet a club representative last night.
Conway also denied that Smith had a meeting with the Knights last week.
The Knights and the Eels will meet in a first-round NRL match in front of a packed house at EnergyAustralia Stadium on Saturday.
The timing of that match has made it seem even more unlikely that the two parties will strike a deal this week.
But there is another school of thought to suggest that the speculation about Smith could see a resolution come sooner rather than later, just to put the issue to bed.
The Newcastle management see Smith as the sort of coach who can prepare the club for as smooth a transition as possible to life after Andrew Johns.
The superstar halfback is contracted to the Knights until the end of 2008, but he admits he is a year-to-year proposition because of an ongoing knee injury.
Meanwhile, the board of the Canberra Raiders club yesterday ploughed through a long list of potential new coaches before coming up with a shortlist of names to replace Penrith-bound Matthew Elliott, who departs at the end of the
season. Raiders chief executive Simon Hawkins said last night the club planned to now begin interviewing coaches this week, with a view to signing a successor to Elliott by the end of this month.
He said: "We went through a list of 20-odd coaches and many of those names had been mentioned as possibilities in the media over the last few weeks.
"We just wanted to make sure we at least looked at all the possibilities, but we have ruled a fair few people out now.
"We narrowed the list down to five or six, some of whom have applied for the job and others that we have been interested in from an early stage."
Hawkins refused to name any of the coaches on the shortlist, but the club had made it clear before now that two-time premiership-winning coach Chris Anderson would be strongly considered.
Others on the shortlist are likely to include John Lang, who will coach Penrith until the end of the season , and former New Zealand Warriors coach Daniel Anderson, who is now in charge at English club St Helens.
The meeting was to decide whether to offer Smith an interview as well, but it is not clear whether the Raiders will now wait to see if he does business with Newcastle first.
"We'll be making phone calls first thing in the morning to set up a few interviews," Hawkins said. "I'd like to have something wrapped up in the next few weeks."
Hawkins said the club had not decided on a particular coach as their preferred option, but Chris Anderson remains the favourite at this stage.
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