“There’s two kinds of coaches, them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired,” former Houston Oilers and New Orleans Saints coach Bum Phillips famously said.
It’s an oft-paraphrased sporting quote – and one inherently applicable to rugby league. If the whispers become a roar that an NRL coach has ‘X’ amount of weeks to save their job, chances are their pink slip has already been drafted up.
But every now and then, an under-pressure gaffer slips out of the hangman’s noose.
Souths coach Jason Demetriou has been the game’s biggest story in recent weeks, seemingly set to be shown the door only to get robust public backing from Rabbitohs CEO Blake Solly after mild improvement in their loss to Cronulla on Saturday.
Take a look back at the coaches who dug their way out of trouble to retain their gig – some only briefly, some who parlayed the reprieve into notable success.
Wayne Bennett
Bennett’s legacy as Brisbane’s foundation mentors is one of rugby league’s greatest coaching success stories, winning six premierships in an unprecedented 21-season tenure. But there were some choppy waters to navigate early on.
After dropping the bombshell of stripping Wally Lewis of the captaincy at the end of 1989 – a call that preceded Queensland’s favourite son’s exit from the club 12 months later – Bennett’s Broncos finished a disappointing seventh in 1991.
While public opinion north of the Tweed turned against Bennett, the Broncos’ players and powerbrokers remained unequivocal in their faith, which he repaid by turning the club into the competition’s preeminent force – beginning with back-to-back grand final triumphs in 1992-93.
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Matthew Elliott
Highly-rated after a trophy-laden stint in charge of Bradford Bulls and four finals series in five seasons with Canberra, former St George forward Matthew Elliott was snapped up to replace premiership-winning coach John Lang at Penrith in 2007.
But the Panthers collected the wooden spoon in Elliott’s first season in charge speculation was rife that he would not see out his three-season deal following a disastrous late-2008 slump.
Elliott convinced the Penrith board to keep him on, however, leading to a contract extension during an improved 2009 campaign – which led into a second-place finish for the Panthers in 2010.
It proved a false dawn for the club, though, and Elliott was punted midway through 2011. A subsequent tenure at the Warriors – his last in the NRL – lasted only 29 games. Elliott has coached more first-grade games without a preliminary final appearance than anyone in premiership history.
David Furner
Neil Henry’s exit to North Queensland at the end of a successful 2008 season for Canberra pitched assistant and club great Furner into the hotseat. A 9-15 record and 13th-place finish in his rookie season as coach and just five wins from the opening 17 rounds of 2010 put him under the pump.
But a stunning late charge elevated the Raiders to week two of the playoffs, taking the heat off Furner…until long losing streaks at both ends of 2011 saw them sink to second-last and had fans with their pitchforks at the ready.
The Canberra hierarchy (lead by Furner’s brother, CEO Don Jr.) backed the coach – and the Raiders produced another slow-starting, fast-finishing 2012 campaign to reach the finals. Furner couldn’t save his job a third time as the club unravelled in 2013 and he departed with three rounds left.
Furner has been a well-travelled NRL assistant gun-for-hire since – aside for a short-lived stint as Leeds’ head coach – and is reportedly set to join the battling Demetriou at Souths.
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John Cartwright
A respected Penrith premiership-winning player and assistant coach to Ricky Stuart with the Roosters and NSW, Cartwright did an outstanding job as the Titans’ foundation coach – including back-to-back top-four finishes in 2009-10 after competitive debut and sophomore campaigns.
But the club spiralled spectacularly, collected the 2011 wooden spoon. Improvement was modest over the next three seasons but incessant media heat from late-2012 was not enough for the club to make a move – Cartwright eventually left on his own terms with a few rounds of 2014 remaining.
Since then the Titans have been one of the NRL’s most trigger-happy clubs, however, punting Neil Henry (2017), Garth Brennan (2019) and Justin Holbrook (2023) mid-season. Cartwright, meanwhile, has enjoyed considerable success as an assistant with the Cowboys, Sea Eagles and Broncos.
Nathan Brown
Former St George Illawarra coach Brown inherited a Newcastle team that had just collected a wooden spoon and was in need of a complete teardown.
The rebuild narrative allowed the affable Brown to hold onto his job despite the Knights’ last-place finishes in 2016-17 – becoming the first coach since Illawarra’s Brian Smith in 1984-85 to avoid the sack after back-to-back spoons.
Brown managed to lure Kalyn Ponga, Mitchell Pearce, David Klemmer, Aidan Guerra, Chris Heighington, Slade Griffin, Jesse Ramien and Tim Glasby to the Hunter but could not take a top-four-ready roster to the finals and was axed before the end of 2019. A stint with the Warriors (2021-22) did not go well.
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Brad Arthur
Arthur took over at Parramatta after Ricky Stuart’s abrupt departure at the end of 2013 and revived the club into a competitive force, navigating the salary cap debacle of 2016 and steering the Eels to a drought-breaking top-four finish the following season.
But the blue-and-golds inexplicably came last with just six wins in 2018 – and Arthur accepting full responsibility for the baffling decline. Few long-serving coaches survive a wooden spoon season, but the Parramatta board stuck solid with ‘BA’ and he earned an extension during 2019.
Arthur guided the Eels to the next four finals series, culminating in a grand final appearance in 2022, but he again finds himself under pressure after they became the first team in six years to miss the playoffs a year after featuring in a premiership decider.
Paul McGregor
Few coaches in the NRL era have possessed as Houdini-esque qualities as McGregor when it comes to holding onto a job that was seemingly hanging by a thread.
‘Mary’ took over at the club he skippered in the 1999 grand final midway through 2014 and ultimately became St George Illawarra’s longest-serving coach – despite finishing with a winning record just once.
The Dragons’ penchant for flying starts to campaigns and horrendous fadeouts made him a constant target of the press and the joint venture’s fanbase, reaching fever pitch throughout 2019 and 2020.
A club statement in June of the latter season confirmed the St George Illawarra board’s support for McGregor, but he was terminated just two months later.
Kevin Walters
After coveting the job throughout his long tenure as an NRL assistant coach, Kevin Walters’ selection as the reeling Broncos’ replacement for Anthony Seibold in 2021 was regarded in some quarters as a poisoned chalice, or a placeholder for a bigger fish.
A return of seven wins in his first season did little to suggest Walters was the long-term answer – and a string of heavy midyear defeats had some pundits speculating he would be gone before 2022 got underway.
The improving Broncos’ shocking fadeout from the top four to miss the finals in 2022 heaped more pressure on ‘Kevvie’, as did a diabolical off-season that even had his own players publicly questioning his quality as a coach.
Nevertheless, Walters stuck to his guns and led the club to a top-two finish and a grand final in 2023 and is among the safer current coaches in the NRL.
Adam O’Brien
Most had written off Adam O’Brien’s chances of saving his job at Newcastle with two months of the 2022 regular season remaining, speculating that he would be axed if his side couldn’t beat Canterbury before their Round 19 bye.
Highly-rated former Storm assistant O’Brien took the Knights to the 2020-21 finals – albeit slightly underwhelming seventh-place finishes and week one exits – before they slumped to 14th in 2022 with eight losses from their last nine games.
The Knights had just five wins heading into the aforementioned fate-deciding clash with the Bulldogs…which they won 66-0 to kick-start an amazing 10-match winning streak that carried them to the second week of the playoffs for the first time in a decade.
O’Brien signed an extension until the end of 2027 in February – which will make him Newcastle’s longest-serving coach if he sees it through – though the Knights’ modest start to the campaign has already raised question about the wisdom of the club’s decision.