Nine Newspapers<\/a> earlier in the week, but has now made a surprise suggestion as to who may be the man for the job should Daley step aside.<\/p>\nTwo former State of Origin representatives in Johns and Willie Mason has suggested former Manly and Bulldogs coach Trent Barrett would be the perfect fit for the New South Wales role.<\/p>\n
Andrew Johns and Willie Mason like Trent Barrett for the Blues coaching job.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need a very experienced coach and for mine, someone who has got the DNA of New South Wales and has great experience is Trent Barrett,\u201d Johns said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBaz didn\u2019t have great success in first grade with Manly and the Dogs, but the clubs at those times were struggling.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was at Penrith when they first started the run and then last year, he did the attack for Brisbane… I think Trent Barrett would be perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johns\u2019 sentiment backed up by Bulldogs great Mason, adding Barrett is in touch with the modern game.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s highly respected and he\u2019s a man\u2019s man and he knows what\u2019s going on,\u201d Mason said on the Levels podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re talking about a player who\u2019s entrenched in the game and understands all the little rules and everything that\u2019s going on, Trent Barrett is your guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barrett hasn\u2019t had a taste of full-time head coaching in four years, since resigning as Bulldogs coach mid-season in 2022.<\/p>\n
Since then, he\u2019s had a stint as an assistant at the Parramatta Eels where he was then tasked with a caretaker role after Brad Arthur was relieved of his duties at the Eels.<\/p>\n
Barrett then moved to the Brisbane Broncos as an assistant under Michael Maguire, tasting NRL premiership success last season before a tough run so far in 2026.<\/p>\n
Robbo on Evans: “We can do better!” | 05:06<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NRL veteran James Graham is currently in the middle of a marathon 24-hour fundraiser for former South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-760555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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