Bulldogs supremo Phil Gould says the club is “rethinking everything about our operation” after building a squad and game plan that doesn’t fit the new high-scoring version of the NRL.
Speaking on his Six Tackles With Gus podcast on Wednesday, Gould said the defence-focused style that had earned Canterbury a top-three finish last season is no longer successful in 2026.
The NRL’s decision to expand the use of set restarts this season has led to a dramatic increase in scoring, and the Bulldogs have seemingly been left behind. Only the last-placed Dragons (130) have scored fewer points than Canterbury (173).
“If I had one theory about the whole thing, and I’m not the football coach, I’m not telling the coach or anything, but we built this team over the last couple of years built on old DNA of defence and fitness and resilience,” Gould, the Bulldogs general manager of football, said.
“And we haven’t been a big point-scoring team for the last two years either, we’ve been winning games three tries to one or four tries to two and we’ve really backed our defence, and in the game today it’s hard to do that. It just hasn’t suited us.
“You look at the point scores on the weekend, I think it was 38-16, 32-10, 46-18, 34-8, 36-12, 42-12, 28-6, all the scoreboards look the same, one team seems to get a run on and runs away on the scoreboard and the other team can’t seem to cope because of a lack of possession and what have you, now that’s a trend that we’ve seen over the last month in particular in rugby league and we’re on the wrong end of that.
“It’s got us rethinking everything about our operation but right at the moment we need to support the players and we need to support the coaches and see if we can get some good performances and some confidence back into their football.”
This time last season, the Bulldogs were sitting in first place on the ladder, with nine wins and one defeat. There points differential was +110.
