Part 2
But what of the head coach?
Johnston cannot sack McGregor. Only the Dragons board can do that, although the chief executive can make a recommendation.
There are rumblings from the St George side of the merger — although not from their four appointed directors — that a heavy loss to the bottom-placed Titans on the Gold Coast on Saturday night will mean he must go.
Excuses can easily be made — the de Belin saga, captain Gareth Widdop asking for a release, a heavy injury toll — but the manner in which the Dragons have played post-Origin is not acceptable.
The lowest point came in the 77th minute of Sunday’s 42-14 loss to the Wests Tigers at the SCG.
On the other side of halfway, Tigers replacement Josh Reynolds jumped out of dummy half and scooted away as the Dragons’ two markers — Tyson Frizell and Korbin Sims — passively drifted the other way.
Reynolds came to halfback Ben Hunt, who almost appeared to get out the way as Reynolds breezed past before passing inside to Elijah Taylor. Widdop and Jackson Ford came across in cover from different angles but instead of stopping him comically ran into each other as Taylor scored.
In the stands, the Red V faithful among the paltry crowd of 9000 dropped their heads in disappointment, shame, anger.
“Mary hasn’t lost the dressing-room,” insists one Dragons insider.
Maybe not. But, tellingly, his most disappointing players of late have been his senior ones.
What looks likely to save his skin is the decision in April, after just five matches,
to re-sign him for a further two years.
The club argues it was done so early to provide stability after a pre-season of madness around de Belin. Another reason often tossed up: he had a 51 per cent winning percentage — the fifth best in the NRL. (McGregor's success rate has dipped to 47 per cent, which is ranked 10th among the current coaches).
This is the point in the discussion when the eyes of Dragons supporters roll back into their heads.
This stat — like all the other numbers regularly tossed up like tries conceded from kicks and so forth — is irrelevant.
What matters most is how you finish the season.
The Dragons finished 11th after McGregor replaced the sacked Steve Price in May. In 2015, they finished eighth but lost to the Bulldogs in the first week of the finals. In 2016, they finished 11th. In 2017, ninth. Last year, after finishing seventh, they pumped the Broncos in the first week of the finals. This remains McGregor’s only finals win after Souths beat his team 13-12 the following week.
This season, the Dragons will finish second last.
No performance clause for the remainder of the season was put in McGregor’s contract extension — nor a clause about paying him out early.
It means it will cost the Dragons roughly $1.2 million to get rid of their coach. Then the club would need to spend more money on a replacement.
How did the club snooker itself like this? Why, after years of notorious late-season fade-outs, didn’t it wait?
When the WIN Corporation last year bought out Illawarra’s 50 per cent stake in the club, it future-proofed the club’s finances. But questions are now being asked by people within the club just how deep the Gordon family, which owns WIN, wants to dig into its pockets.
Dragons chairman Andrew Gordon declined to comment when contacted.
In McGregor’s defence, seasons rarely come much worse, the rot setting in as far back as October when
Widdop asked for a release despite having three seasons to run on his deal, because he wanted to return to England.
That rocked the Dragons. It also prompted them to chase Corey Norman, who was on the outer at the Eels.
Securing Norman meant they burned through the salary cap money set aside for a winger, which they needed after Nene Macdonald was released to the Cowboys.
Widdop’s horrific shoulder injury in the early season win over the Broncos seemed to alleviate McGregor’s issues with the spine, allowing Norman to stay in the halves with last year’s regular fullback, Matt Dufty, back in the No.1.
Instead of bringing stability, McGregor has chopped and changed his back three — although, admittedly, sometimes because of injury. Meanwhile, his centres Tim Lafai and Euan Aitken, have become the backline's weakest links.
Yes, the injury gods have not been kind: Widdop, Norman, Frizell, James Graham, Zac Lomax, Tariq and Korbin Sims have all have all spent considerable time on the sidelines.
There have been six broken bones among the playing group. That’s not high-performance mismanagement but merely bad luck.
But the Dragons have mostly been at full strength post-Origin. Last year, after establishing themselves as the competition “benchmark” before face-planting after the interstate series, the need to rest and manage representative players was identified. What happened?
Halfback Ben Hunt, the highest paid player in the club, has been the worst of them.
The most common line out of the club about him is that he takes defeat and criticism to heart. That is a staggering assessment for an Australian and Queensland player, on that much money.
Dragons recruitment manager Ian Millward has received some heat for signing Hunt on $1.2 million per season. It’s a lot of cap space for a player who bruises easily.
But it was McGregor who wanted the former Broncos halfback. “He’s always been the one I wanted,” the coach said early last season when Hunt was firing. It is similar to his statement before this season that “this is the squad I’ve always wanted”.
They are statements Dragons fans have not forgotten.
Sacking the coach, though, is problematic. If he goes, who replaces him?
The campaign for deregistered former
Cronulla coach Shane Flanagan is on in earnest but it won’t happen. The NRL won’t say it publicly but his only hope of coaching anywhere next year would be as an assistant.
Other “recycled” coaches are less appealing. Neil Henry or Anthony Griffin? Both have been sacked by their last two clubs. Nathan Brown or Trent Barrett? One’s already had a go while the other couldn’t get a star-studded Manly to the finals.
The obvious candidates are former players Craig Fitzgibbon and Jason Ryles.
But Fitzgibbon has recently signed a fat three-year extension as Trent Robinson’s assistant at the Roosters. Ryles is highly regarded at the Storm but is he ready to piece together a broken team?
Despite the noise about him needing to beat the Titans to survive, McGregor is expected to keep his job because of the size of the payout.
And, if he does, he will be looking for considerable bounce back in 2020.
De Belin’s trial in Wollongong District Court will start on March 2 and is likely to last two weeks, meaning it will finish days before the start of the 2020 season.
Regardless of the verdict, it means he can no longer be used as an excuse if the Dragons fail — again.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/in...ans-tell-me-to-sack-mary-20190906-p52oj8.html
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