Oxley was recently announced as the Bulldogs' new first grade co-coach, having most recently coached the squad in 2019's premiership year, but he's also got the Bulls' Caldwell Cup defence on his mind.

Oxley didn't make his return to the Bulldogs after a long time away from the club - he was still heavily involved in the 2021 campaign - and he believes that close connection has helped him feel ready to take on the pair of coaching roles together again.

"I was doing skill training with the club every Tuesday last year, so I still had that, but I'm still going to take on the Blue Bulls next season as well," he said.

"I'll be going for the three-peat there, so I'm going to stick with the boys to try and get that completed.

"I want to do a similar thing with the Bulls that I'm doing at Bulldogs - try to set up a standard of football that hopefully maintains for years to come."

Oxley scored the Caldwell Cup and Blowes Clothing Cup double as a coach in 2019 and then successfully defended the former cup in 2021 (no tournament was held in 2020).

Central West are currently in one of the brightest periods of the zone's history and Oxley believes there's still much more for the representative side to achieve.

"We're a strong zone and sometimes we'd go through peaks and troughs - and they were big troughs - but I'm hoping we can avoid them with a positive program," he said.

"[Central West Rugby Union president] Matt Tink has assisted with that in a very big way with his professionalism and his resources, so we've got some great things planned for the Bulls at the start of next year."

The key takeaway Oxley has from his previous double duty in the Bulls-Bulldogs coaching role is that he needed to be more flexible in his approach between the representative and club level.

He said despite his experience in coaching he always feels like there's so much to learn.

"This is the club I grew up with so I always want to help put something back into Bulldogs," he said.

"I just need to approach it in a different way. Last time I took a representative coach's approach to the team and I didn't really comprehend the transition that was required, instead of bringing over the stuff that I'd been doing with Central West.

"It was a short, intense program and I found out that the intensity of a club program is very different. It was an important learning curve.

"I want to see how I can adapt and grow as a coach. There's more to learn. I'm ageing, but I'm not done yet."

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