Former Broncos coach Ivan Henjak’s long-awaited return to coaching will only last a season

IVAN Henjak’s long-awaited return to coaching will only last a season after another NRL club decided he had underachieved with his playing list.

Canterbury will axe the controversial former Broncos coach when they formally link with the Sunshine Coast Falcons this year.

The Courier-Mail can reveal the Bulldogs are set to invest heavily in the Falcons, which is a great result for rugby league in the area and the Intrust Super Cup competition, but not such good news for Henjak.

The Bulldogs-Falcons partnership will mean every club in the Cup has an NRL affiliate but Henjak could be shown the door within a month.

Henjak will not be the first coach sacked this year after Burleigh coach Carl Briggs was shown the door on Thursday night.

While Burleigh’s record is average this season, Sunshine Coast’s is terrible.

The Falcons have lost 28 consecutive games, nine of them under Henjak.

Their for-and-against this season is minus 272 and if they lose to Mackay tonight they will break the QRL record for consecutive losses.

Falcons chief executive Chris Flannery, who declined to comment on the issue when contacted, is deep in negotiations with the Bulldogs about becoming their official affiliate.

The Bulldogs want to own the surging league nursery from Caboolture to Gladstone and are already recruiting in the region.

Bulldogs development manager Jim Whitney held a series of formal meetings with the Falcons in the past week.

The Bulldogs are taking the project so seriously they want to base the new Falcons coach in Sydney. He will fly to the Sunshine Coast with the Bulldogs’ reserve grade players during the week.

Henjak only signed a one-year deal with the Falcons. It was his first head coaching job since the Broncos fired him in the 2011 pre-season.

It is understood the Falcons expected to win a handful of games this year but they now face becoming the second club in Queensland Cup history to have a winless season.

Last week they were smashed 36-0 by the second-from-bottom Central Capras.

That result put Henjak’s tenure on thin ice and when the Bulldogs deal is signed in coming weeks he will be told he is not in their coaching plans.

Henjak walked into a club that lost 19 games in a row last year and is in many ways a victim of unfortunate circumstance as the Bulldogs want a coach they can mould.

Burleigh sacked Briggs on Thursday after a string of inconsistent results punctuated by their lacklustre 28-0 loss to Gold Coast rivals Tweed Heads last weekend.

The Bears are eighth and only two wins outside the top five, but their points differential is minus 48 and they have conceded the second-most points in the league.

“Burleigh is a massive club that demands success and the results we’ve had after the recruitment this year were perceived not to be good enough,’’ Briggs said. “At the end of the day I’ve paid the price for that.’’

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