Steve Georgallis: I love the club… I’d be stoked to stay

Interim Bulldogs coach Steve Georgallis said he would be “stoked to stay” at the Bulldogs as an assistant coach next year after all but conceding he won’t be the Cowboys coach in 2021, NRL.com reports.

Georgallis said recently he would be prepared to put his hat in the ring for any head coaching jobs, including the Cowboys, but said he saw a bright future for himself under next year’s head coach Trent Barrett at Canterbury.

“I’ll be honest with you. I think North Queensland have probably already chosen their coach,” he said after Canterbury’s 41-10 loss to the Storm.

“I am pretty sure they would have asked me if they were interested in me. It is the merry-go-round of coaches at the moment.

“To be honest I’d be really happy to stay here as an assistant coach. Hopefully Trent can see the plusses of me staying here. Those head coaching jobs are rare but I am pretty confident [the Cowboys] would have contacted me if they were interested in my services.”

For Georgallis, to remain at the Bulldogs makes sense on so many levels. He sees a bright future for a club that has recently signed English international Luke Thompson and will welcome Raiders and NSW back Nick Cotric next year.

“I haven’t talked to Trent. I know he is concentrating on Penrith at the moment and I am pretty sure if he wants to contact me he will,” he said.

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“I love coaching. I love the club. I have been here for four years and was a Canterbury junior. I’d be stoked to stay.

“There are a lot of good players coming through. In 2018 we won the reserve grade competition and the under 16s and under 18s have been making finals.

“We just have to surround those young players with experienced players to help them come through.”

Georgallis, who had coached the Bulldogs to an 18-12 win over the Knights and narrow losses to the Dragons and Eels in the past three weeks, said he had two goals for the rest of the year.

“We’d definitely like to get off the bottom of the ladder. I don’t believe they are the 16th-placed team in the comp,” he said.

“I definitely believe they are better than that and you have seen that in the last few weeks how well they can play, so that will be my number one thing for the next seven weeks, to get off the bottom of the competition.

“Secondly, it is for them to keep learning and that with every game you play in the NRL you have to turn up with the right attitude.”

The Bulldogs were disappointing against the Storm and were made to pay for some naïve defensive reads.

“I just had a really big chat with them about the last three weeks and how much we had learned and how much we had thrown it all away with that performance. It is really unacceptable for the NRL,” he said.

Georgallis said that they had trained to prepare for what the Storm did in attack but failed to apply it.

“They have got the resilience to get back into a game but came up with the wrong plays at the wrong time,” he said.

“Probably the missing ingredient is what goes on between our ears. They had a few players out but we were complacent. Unfortunately we didn’t turn up and they did.”

Sourced By: NRL.com