The ‘ritual scapegoating’ of coaches is rife in sport. Does it achieve anything?

April 25, 2026 — 9:33am

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Here’s the thing: the Dragons shouldn’t have sacked Shane Flanagan, and certainly not so unceremoniously. I didn’t think I’d ever write that. Yet here we are.

Apportioning a lot of the blame to former coach Flanagan says everything and nothing about the value of the “word” of the club. Of course, they’re not the first club to do something like this, nor will they be the last.

In August 2025, St George Illawarra proclaimed the extension of Flanagan’s tenure through to the end of the 2028 season. Eight months later, Dragons chairman Andrew Lancaster announced it was all over.

What’s invariably lost in such matters is that it’s not as if the archetypal “sacked coach” now gets a payout akin to an unexpected Lotto victory, unless the contract specifically states that is the only path available to the employer terminating for convenience.

And head coach contracts often don’t require a full payout. Indeed, professional sport coaching contracts represent a Faustian bargain: a coach must surrender rights and certainty for opportunity.

And almost all coaching employment situations end through employer-led termination.

However, in any event, Flanagan shouldn’t have been shown the door. Not because he’s blameless – no head coach loses 11 premiership matches on the bounce and has a proud record – but because six decades of peer-reviewed evidence, and a forensic examination of comparable cases in the NFL, European football, the AFL and NRL, deliver the same verdict.

The mid-season coaching sacrifice is the most ancient placebo in professional sport. It soothes the patient; it does nothing to excise the malignancy.

The empirical question is this: does sacking a head coach mid-tenure improve a team?

It’s a question that’s occupied sport and labour economists for generations.

The answer, across codes, continents and methodologies is........

© The Age