The Dragons are thrilled to announce that club great Mark ‘Piggy’ Riddell will join the Dragons as an NRLW assistant coach for the upcoming season.
Riddell – who played 92 games for the club from 2001 to 2004 – will be a part of Nathan Cross’s revamped coaching staff having spent the early part of the season assisting Shaun Timmins’ SG Ball squad at Illawarra.
“I’m so happy with the appointment of Piggy; we’re lucky to have someone of his calibre here with the girls,” Female Football Manager Sam Bremner said.
“He actually was my first ever representative coach at Origin in 2012, and, for me, he has been on the journey of women’s rugby league since I first met him. I observed the interaction between Piggy and Crossy chatting all things women’s rugby league, this team, what it needs, what they’re great at and I really admired the depth of knowledge between the two of them and knew that they would work really well together.
“From my perspective, Piggy was actually one of the first coaches to come into this space and really change the dynamic of the type of rugby league we played.”
Riddell is excited to be back working alongside Bremner as well as Cross as the squad enters a new era.
“I’ve known Sam for a long, long time and, yeah, she gave me a call,” Riddell said.
“Her and Crossy were keen to sit down and see if I, first of all, was able to help them out. A couple of phone calls later and catch up for a coffee, and we sort of worked out that it could work. We had a good chat for a while. Crossy mapped out his plan and what he’s thinking, and Sammy did as well, and I was keen to help them out, so I jumped on board with them. They’ve been doing a lot of good work. It’s exciting.”
Riddell’s return marks a homecoming of sorts with the 44-year-old happy to return to the club where he made his NRL debut back in 2001.
“I’ve lived down here for the past seven or eight years now and my kids have all been brought up down here; it’s a special place for me,” he said.
“As an ex-player and an ex-player that coaches, you just want to help the next generation and hopefully some of those players can come through and have a career in rugby league. Timmo and I have been doing that in SG Ball at the Steelers for the last couple of years, and now I get an opportunity to help out the girls. Hopefully, we can see a lot of them have some really successful years here at the Dragons and successful NRLW careers.”
Riddell understands better than most the depth of talent that the club’s junior base has at its disposal.
It’s part of the reason why he was excited to join Cross and Bremner’s revamped NRLW program.
“Having known the area down here for a long time and the quality of the competitions down here, they’re going about it the right way signing up all the good, local girls, and they’re trying to bring some experience in and around those girls,” he said.
“It’s an exciting, young group. We all know the quality players that are coming through the system here and Crossy’s mentioned before that it’s about just finding the right girls to come into the team and help those young ones out. I think the more local talent that we can get into this team and nurture, the better. We’ve got two quality people leading the way, so hopefully things can turn around and we can get the Dragons girls back where they belong.”
