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The legendary Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero said: “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error”.
Phil Gould is many things in the world of rugby league, but an idiot he is not.
Ivan Cleary, 47, has demonstrated at Wests Tigers this season that his unceremonious dumping as the Panthers’ head coach was a mistake.
Cleary was head hunted by Gould from New Zealand and was tasked with having to re-build the Panthers after several big name players were cut in 2012.
He took the Panthers to the preliminary finals in 2014 before being named the Dally M coach of the year.
11 months later he was sacked.
“I believed I was right at the time and that’s why the decision was made,” Gould said this week.
He was appointed as the coach of the Wests Tigers in April 2017, and by the end of that year he had lost three of his best four players including captain Aaron Woods, James Tedesco and Mitchell Moses prompting bookmakers to list his team wooden spoon favourites.
The Wests Tigers list of their top 30 players in 2018 was rated by the market and most pundits in the bottom two NRL teams – along with the Titans.
After 20 NRL rounds, they have won ten of their 20 games this season giving Cleary the unofficial ‘Moneyball’ Coach of the Year Award. They are on the cusp of the finals while teams with better rosters are sure to miss out.
What he has achieved this season with the ‘unwanted cattle’ that he was left with is a tribute to his ability to turn borderline players into genuine NRL class players.
What happens next will surely be soap opera stuff.
On the one hand, a long-term Panthers contract and an apology would be nice. He would also get to coach his son Nathan.
On the other hand, the Wests Tigers gave Ivan a job after he was sacked – by the Panthers. If the club doesn’t show me loyalty once before, how will I be sure that they will not do it again
A recent survey from Fox Sports showed that Wests Tigers are the second most popular team in the NRL. This is largely due to Ivan Cleary’s success this season winning against most of the high-profile teams when the market said he could not.
The high-flying Panthers will be fine regardless of who is the coach, but the struggling Tigers need the special skills of Ivan Cleary to keep them on this upward curve.
Rugby league needs the Wests Tigers to do well.
You get the feeling the Cleary family will decide together and the word ‘loyalty’ will surely pop up.
Deep down Ivan will wonder if the Panthers would be making all this fuss over him if his son was not their halfback and off contract next year.
Would a professional NRL team really sign a coach based on who his son is?
Ivan Cleary is an elite NRL coach and the Panthers made an error in sacking him. They made a further error when they extended his replacement Anthony Griffin when there was no prospect of other teams wanting him.
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