Sunnybank has appointed international high-performance expert Brad Harrington as its new director of rugby, with hopes the strategic move will return the Dragons to premiership contention in the Hospital Cup.

Sunnybank’s first grade side hasn’t played finals footy since 2017 and last won a premiership in 2011. They are set to finish last in 2025, in a season defined by promising starts and early leads, only to fall away in the second half of matches.

With building “resilience” a clear focus at Dragons HQ, the club has turned to a man who spent two Rugby World Cup campaigns as head of strength and conditioning for the Wallabies.

“Resilience is one of the things we want to improve,” Harrington said.

“My background is in high performance – strength and conditioning, skills, performance management – and I’m really looking forward to bringing that experience to Sunnybank.

“It’s been a really thorough process interviewing for the role with Sunnybank.”

Improving performance levels in the first and second grade sides will be a clear focus for Harrington, who is originally from Cronulla but has spent the past 25 years working around the world in professional sport.

“They haven’t been going as well as they would have liked in recent times,” Sunnybank’s new director of rugby said.

“So, a goal for us would be to re-establish ourselves within those performance streams of first and second grade men’s and start pushing back up into semi-final and final rugby.”

While turning the first-grade side’s fortunes around is a key part of the job, Harrington’s scope of influence will extend across all levels of the club.

“Some clubs have a director of rugby who’s wholly focused on coaching the first-grade team,” he said.

“But Sunnybank have taken a broader view. It’s about developing coaches and players across the whole club. It’s pretty exciting.”

He said the strength of Sunnybank’s foundations was a major attraction to the rebuild.

“Sunnybank’s a huge club in Brisbane and the foundations are there,” he said.

“We’ve got close to 40 teams across juniors, colts and seniors. We’re also really committed to growing the women’s and girls’ teams within the club as well.”

Harrington’s career spans more than two decades, beginning in England’s Super League before moving into union with roles at Leinster, the Scarlets, Waratahs, Wallabies, and Japan Rugby Union – always with a focus on elite development systems.

Most recently, he has been working with Argentina as a high-performance consultant across Los Pumas, the U20s and the sevens program.

“I’ve been on the road a lot with Argentina – we had the Pumas and Lions game in Dublin, and I just spent the last five weeks at the U20 World Cup in Italy,” he said.

“The interview process with Sunnybank has been ongoing, but I’ve only just gotten back to Australia… I have been following the games on Stan.”

While Hospital Cup fans won’t see changes on the pitch until 2026, Harrington said work has already begun behind the scenes.

“We’ve got a lot of good projects in the pipeline, and we’ll be able to talk more about those in September,” he said.

“Right now, I’m just really excited to work with the whole club to help bring Sunnybank back to where it’s been in the past.”