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Many believe that Penrith should sack Anthony Griffin, which is crazy to think considering the historically unshakeable bond that exists between clubs and coaches.
Despite this notion, Griffin cannot be sacked. That’s because he is not sackable.
Sure, he may be 2-7, an allegedly poor communicator, and a communist, but he is not a porn star. Or sackable.
The Panthers coach is safe, and that’s because he will be spared the axe by a foolhardy Penrith administration reticent to appear foolhardy.
Griffin has job security for a purely football-based reason; because human beings don’t wilfully admit to bonehead decisions, especially ones on par with releasing Luke Lewis to win premierships for other clubs.
Pardon the small reduction, but sacking Griffin would be an admission of guilt by Penrith for punting Ivan Cleary due to having bags under his eyes.
Cleary was deemed not worthy of applying the finishing touches to his team of nitro youngsters in 2014 – a team including one he produced himself from scratch – because the administration believed him to be ‘tired’.
Instead, the board replaced him with Griffin because they felt the team was missing the touch of a Queenslander who hated Peter Wallace.
Cutting ties with Cleary at that point was like ripping the hot water system out of a bathroom that might’ve needed a new tap, and it was obvious to everyone except the Panthers.
From here, Cleary earned the title of rugby league’s most feared unemployed coach.
On almost a weekly basis, he solved the problems of many weakly-coached clubs simply by being linked to them. Such is the man’s skillset.
Now that he’s cleaning up the Tigers while Griffin flounders with premiership favourites, the Panthers’ decision has been categorically proven a stinker.
But nobody likes to admit when they are wrong, do they?
Only idiots admit their mistakes, learn from it and cathartically pen a self-help blog. It’s the smart ones who grit their teeth and hold the line, lest they appear the klutz.
That’s because it’s human nature to cover up your mistakes. Unless you’re Josh Papalii, but he doesn’t really count because he’s not really human, he’s more of a rampaging skip bin.
Because the Penrith administration prefer to avoid appearing crazy- and because their brand nowadays is of market leading maturity- they won’t be sacking more coaches any time soon.
They’ve got a reputation now. They pulled down their eyesore scoreboard, built an academy and consider two beers after 10pm to be dipsomania. They don’t need the attention.
Hence, they will stick to their guns and blindly maintain they were correct all along, doing so by sticking with Griffin and hoping his team’s small lapses slowly reduce from 80 minutes in length. Quickly.