You’ll get me shot’: Barrett coy over fresh Penrith raid as he makes Cleary-Flanagan comparison
New Bulldogs coach Trent Barrett has drawn comparisons between his Canterbury outfit and the Penrith side that reached 2020’s NRL grand final, while refusing to rule out fresh bids for some of the Panthers’ off-contract stars.
Barrett returned to head coaching straight after being part of the Panthers coaching staff that saw them clinch the minor premiership before losing the grand final to Melbourne.
Seen by many as the catalyst for Penrith’s turnaround in 2020, the ex-Manly coach is charged with the same task at Canterbury.
And Barrett says he can see familiar elements to the Panthers as he seeks to end the Dogs’ finals drought.
“There is some similarity between Nathan Cleary and Kyle Flanagan,” he told Sky Sports Radio. “Kyle will have his hands on the ball a lot as did Nathan.
“There will be a few things that we will change because it depends on personnel.
“We were pretty blessed out there at Penrith with some really good individual strike players"
“My job as a coach, especially in attack, is to get our best players the ball at the right times on the right part of the field and blokes like (Viliame) Kikau and (Stephen) Crichton – we were a little bit lucky with them out at Penrith.
“We’re getting there now, (Raymond Faitala-Mariner) is one that’s stood out for me. There’s a bit of Kikau about him actually, he’s a big body and a bit of a weapon on an edge.
“Our attack will morph into sort of what it wants to be through the course of the year.
“At the start of the year it’s just really important we complete our sets, defend really well and hang onto the footy.”
Nick Cotric (Raiders) and Kyle Flanagan (Roosters) and Josh Addo-Carr will join after the 2021 season.
Most notably, however, has been his penchant for raiding the Panthers for players.
Jack Hetherington joins for 2021, while Matt Burton follows the year after.
Now attention turns to off-contract Penrith centre Stephen Crichton who headlines a long list of Panthers stars without a club for 2022.
“You’ll get me shot,” Barrett laughed when asked about signing more Panthers players. “There’s a few out there I wouldn’t mind.
“I don’t think I’ll be welcome back there for a while.
“There’s still spots there. We’re still working hard behind the scenes to fill them, we’ve got a couple of good kids here in our juniors too that if we don’t get who we want or we can’t get them for the following year, that we’ll probably bring through.
“We’re still working really hard there and we’ve got room but there’s probably only two or three that we’ve really targeted that we want to bring in.”
‘You’ll get me shot’: Barrett coy on new Penrith raid as he makes Cleary-Flanagan comparison
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