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The Wests Tigers head-hunted Cameron Ciraldo. They offered the biggest contract for a rookie coach in NRL history. This is the inside story of how he ended up with Phil Gould at the Bulldogs.
Via SMH Sport by Michael Chammas
MARCH 17, 2023
Inside a Lebanese restaurant at Brighton le Sands last winter, Cameron Ciraldo sat with his agent George Mimis to discuss a five-year deal on the table at the Wests Tigers.
They were the only two people in the restaurant. At least that’s what they thought until they saw two men make their way down the stairs from an upper level they didn’t know was there.
One of the men, well known to many powerful rugby league identities with close ties to the Bulldogs, made his way over to greet them. Given the press that week, it wasn’t hard to work out why Ciraldo was meeting with his manager.
Before they could finish their kafta and hummus, Ciraldo and Mimis received separate text messages almost simultaneously from Phil Gould.
Gould outlined the challenges that were ahead for the Bulldogs, refusing to sugar-coat the scale of the task that lay ahead for whoever was to become Trent Barrett’s successor at Canterbury.
Knowing that Ciraldo was weighing up a massive offer from the Tigers, Gould threw his hat in the ring and requested a meeting with the pair if Ciraldo was ready to walk away from his role as an assistant coach at Penrith.
Until a few months earlier, Ciraldo had no intention of leaving the Panthers. The Herald can reveal that Ciraldo was given the impression his mentor, Ivan Cleary, wanted to transition out of coaching and into to a senior managerial role at the Panthers within the next couple of years. Ciraldo was willing to bide his time.
It wasn’t until a couple of days before the club signed off on a five-year extension for both Ivan and Nathan Cleary did Ciraldo become aware of the coach’s intention to remain at the helm long term.
Ciraldo re-thought his options. The Tigers’ pursuit of him went back to the end of 2021 season. Well before the 38-0 shellacking at the hands of Canterbury, the wooden-spooners that year, in the final round that led to an internal review into another disaster season under coach Michael Maguire, the Tigers had put out the feelers.
Their patience had worn out and they wanted to gauge the appetite of the man considered the best coach without a NRL head gig.
At the time, Ciraldo was locked away with the Panthers at a hotel in the Sunshine Coast preparing for the finals series.
Joining the Tigers would have meant that, after 12 weeks on the road with his family in Queensland, he would have jumped into his first NRL head coaching job without a day’s preparation.
He also had intimated that he wouldn’t put his name up for the job while Maguire was still employed. The Tigers, though, didn’t want to sack Maguire without a back-up plan.
On the morning that Maguire was due to meet with club powerbrokers to discuss his future in 2021, the Tigers were made aware that any attempt to lure Ciraldo that summer would be a waste of time.
A lack of a plan B, combined with Maguire’s vow to undertake a raft of changes for the following season, resulted in the Tigers coach holding on to his job.
But the stay of execution was only temporary. A couple of months into the 2022 season, the Tigers threw out the bait to see if Ciraldo had had a change of heart.
This time they were far more confident he was ready to take the plunge. Once again, Ciraldo wouldn’t meet with the Tigers if they hadn’t made a decision on the incumbent. A few weeks later, Maguire was gone.
The Tigers made it clear they were in the market for a development coach. That was code for Ciraldo – a Balmain tragic who celebrated the 2005 Wests Tigers premiership at Northies despite having made his NRL debut for the Sharks that same year.
Ciraldo and his partner Kim began looking at property in the inner west. They often parked the family car outside the club’s Concord centre of excellence, which was under construction at the time, to get a feel for the job he was giving strong consideration to taking.
A couple of weeks later he agreed to a secret meeting with the club’s powerbrokers at their temporary base out the back of Concord Oval.
There were aspects of the club that impressed him, including the passion of chairman Lee Hagipantelis. Knowing Ciraldo’s Italian heritage, Hagipantelis asked a bakery in Burwood to open on their day off to make cannoli to take for Ciraldo and his family.
Hagipantelis also sent flowers to the family’s home in western Sydney as a gesture of appreciation for meeting with them.
Ciraldo liked what he saw with the pathways and the juniors coming through the system. The club’s once-dire salary-cap position had also changed significantly, allowing the Tigers to be active in the marketplace.
But before Ciraldo had returned home from the meeting, he was reading about it in the press. It immediately set alarm bells ringing.
As excited as Ciraldo was about the five-year deal on the table, for every reason to take the job he found another why he shouldn’t.
The treatment of former Tigers general manager Adam Hartigan, who was moved on at the request of Tim Sheens to allow for the return of Sheens’ right-hand man and recruitment manager Warren McDonnell, left Ciraldo questioning the club’s judgment.
Hartigan now works with Ciraldo at the Bulldogs, so high is the coach’s opinion of the former Tigers head of football.
As much as he was flattered to receive calls from chief executive Justin Pascoe, Hagipantelis and Sheens during their pursuit, it left him confused as to who was calling the shots. Pascoe declined to comment when contacted by the Herald.
The Tigers thought they were doing the right thing by indicating to Ciraldo that he would have complete control of all aspects of the football operation. For a rookie coach, that amount of responsibility wasn’t something he was after.
Ciraldo later took umbrage when information from what he thought was a confidential meeting about how he believed he could lure Stephen Crichton to the Tigers if the centre chose to leave Penrith made its way into the papers.
Ciraldo spent a week visualising himself as the Tigers coach. Every morning he would wake up and play out scenarios through his mind as if he was the coach of the club.
When he called Wests Tigers senior management to turn down their offer, he did so without a deal on the table from the Bulldogs.
The only thing he had from the Bulldogs was a text message from Gould he had received while lunching at the Lebanese restaurant asking him to meet at his home to discuss the potential of taking the job.
No contract was offered or money discussed, but Ciraldo left Gould’s house under no illusion that the Bulldogs job would be his if he wanted it.
His manager, Mimis, raised concerns about the stability of the Canterbury board. He had experienced how volatile things could be at Belmore when he oversaw his client Des Hasler’s ugly break-up from the club in 2017.
That was when Craig and Arthur Laundy had become involved with the club as sponsors. The businessmen, too, were pondering their future with the Bulldogs and had told Mimis – at a meeting at one of their pubs in Rozelle – they were seeking the same assurances about the stability of the club before recommitting as major sponsor.
The appointment of two new board members in June was a significant step in allaying those concerns.
By the time Ciraldo agreed to meet Gould for a midnight tour of the club’s Belmore facility, he had his heart set on the job. He believed the club suited his personality. The identity of the club, of which he felt that was lacking at the amalgamated Tigers, resonated with him.
The presence of Gould, who could shoulder the burden of running everything outside the first-grade team, appealed to him.
By the time an influential St George Illawarra figure reached out to Ciraldo’s manager in July to gauge his appetite in taking over from Anthony Griffin at the Dragons, it was too late.
Gould, regardless of his public denials, had got his man.
Via SMH Sport by Michael Chammas
MARCH 17, 2023
Inside a Lebanese restaurant at Brighton le Sands last winter, Cameron Ciraldo sat with his agent George Mimis to discuss a five-year deal on the table at the Wests Tigers.
They were the only two people in the restaurant. At least that’s what they thought until they saw two men make their way down the stairs from an upper level they didn’t know was there.
One of the men, well known to many powerful rugby league identities with close ties to the Bulldogs, made his way over to greet them. Given the press that week, it wasn’t hard to work out why Ciraldo was meeting with his manager.
Before they could finish their kafta and hummus, Ciraldo and Mimis received separate text messages almost simultaneously from Phil Gould.
Gould outlined the challenges that were ahead for the Bulldogs, refusing to sugar-coat the scale of the task that lay ahead for whoever was to become Trent Barrett’s successor at Canterbury.
Knowing that Ciraldo was weighing up a massive offer from the Tigers, Gould threw his hat in the ring and requested a meeting with the pair if Ciraldo was ready to walk away from his role as an assistant coach at Penrith.
Until a few months earlier, Ciraldo had no intention of leaving the Panthers. The Herald can reveal that Ciraldo was given the impression his mentor, Ivan Cleary, wanted to transition out of coaching and into to a senior managerial role at the Panthers within the next couple of years. Ciraldo was willing to bide his time.
It wasn’t until a couple of days before the club signed off on a five-year extension for both Ivan and Nathan Cleary did Ciraldo become aware of the coach’s intention to remain at the helm long term.
Ciraldo re-thought his options. The Tigers’ pursuit of him went back to the end of 2021 season. Well before the 38-0 shellacking at the hands of Canterbury, the wooden-spooners that year, in the final round that led to an internal review into another disaster season under coach Michael Maguire, the Tigers had put out the feelers.
Their patience had worn out and they wanted to gauge the appetite of the man considered the best coach without a NRL head gig.
At the time, Ciraldo was locked away with the Panthers at a hotel in the Sunshine Coast preparing for the finals series.
Joining the Tigers would have meant that, after 12 weeks on the road with his family in Queensland, he would have jumped into his first NRL head coaching job without a day’s preparation.
He also had intimated that he wouldn’t put his name up for the job while Maguire was still employed. The Tigers, though, didn’t want to sack Maguire without a back-up plan.
On the morning that Maguire was due to meet with club powerbrokers to discuss his future in 2021, the Tigers were made aware that any attempt to lure Ciraldo that summer would be a waste of time.
A lack of a plan B, combined with Maguire’s vow to undertake a raft of changes for the following season, resulted in the Tigers coach holding on to his job.
But the stay of execution was only temporary. A couple of months into the 2022 season, the Tigers threw out the bait to see if Ciraldo had had a change of heart.
This time they were far more confident he was ready to take the plunge. Once again, Ciraldo wouldn’t meet with the Tigers if they hadn’t made a decision on the incumbent. A few weeks later, Maguire was gone.
The Tigers made it clear they were in the market for a development coach. That was code for Ciraldo – a Balmain tragic who celebrated the 2005 Wests Tigers premiership at Northies despite having made his NRL debut for the Sharks that same year.
Ciraldo and his partner Kim began looking at property in the inner west. They often parked the family car outside the club’s Concord centre of excellence, which was under construction at the time, to get a feel for the job he was giving strong consideration to taking.
A couple of weeks later he agreed to a secret meeting with the club’s powerbrokers at their temporary base out the back of Concord Oval.
There were aspects of the club that impressed him, including the passion of chairman Lee Hagipantelis. Knowing Ciraldo’s Italian heritage, Hagipantelis asked a bakery in Burwood to open on their day off to make cannoli to take for Ciraldo and his family.
Hagipantelis also sent flowers to the family’s home in western Sydney as a gesture of appreciation for meeting with them.
Ciraldo liked what he saw with the pathways and the juniors coming through the system. The club’s once-dire salary-cap position had also changed significantly, allowing the Tigers to be active in the marketplace.
But before Ciraldo had returned home from the meeting, he was reading about it in the press. It immediately set alarm bells ringing.
As excited as Ciraldo was about the five-year deal on the table, for every reason to take the job he found another why he shouldn’t.
The treatment of former Tigers general manager Adam Hartigan, who was moved on at the request of Tim Sheens to allow for the return of Sheens’ right-hand man and recruitment manager Warren McDonnell, left Ciraldo questioning the club’s judgment.
Hartigan now works with Ciraldo at the Bulldogs, so high is the coach’s opinion of the former Tigers head of football.
As much as he was flattered to receive calls from chief executive Justin Pascoe, Hagipantelis and Sheens during their pursuit, it left him confused as to who was calling the shots. Pascoe declined to comment when contacted by the Herald.
The Tigers thought they were doing the right thing by indicating to Ciraldo that he would have complete control of all aspects of the football operation. For a rookie coach, that amount of responsibility wasn’t something he was after.
Ciraldo later took umbrage when information from what he thought was a confidential meeting about how he believed he could lure Stephen Crichton to the Tigers if the centre chose to leave Penrith made its way into the papers.
Ciraldo spent a week visualising himself as the Tigers coach. Every morning he would wake up and play out scenarios through his mind as if he was the coach of the club.
When he called Wests Tigers senior management to turn down their offer, he did so without a deal on the table from the Bulldogs.
The only thing he had from the Bulldogs was a text message from Gould he had received while lunching at the Lebanese restaurant asking him to meet at his home to discuss the potential of taking the job.
No contract was offered or money discussed, but Ciraldo left Gould’s house under no illusion that the Bulldogs job would be his if he wanted it.
His manager, Mimis, raised concerns about the stability of the Canterbury board. He had experienced how volatile things could be at Belmore when he oversaw his client Des Hasler’s ugly break-up from the club in 2017.
That was when Craig and Arthur Laundy had become involved with the club as sponsors. The businessmen, too, were pondering their future with the Bulldogs and had told Mimis – at a meeting at one of their pubs in Rozelle – they were seeking the same assurances about the stability of the club before recommitting as major sponsor.
The appointment of two new board members in June was a significant step in allaying those concerns.
By the time Ciraldo agreed to meet Gould for a midnight tour of the club’s Belmore facility, he had his heart set on the job. He believed the club suited his personality. The identity of the club, of which he felt that was lacking at the amalgamated Tigers, resonated with him.
The presence of Gould, who could shoulder the burden of running everything outside the first-grade team, appealed to him.
By the time an influential St George Illawarra figure reached out to Ciraldo’s manager in July to gauge his appetite in taking over from Anthony Griffin at the Dragons, it was too late.
Gould, regardless of his public denials, had got his man.
