Inside Ivan Cleary’s return to Penrith Panthers and the Phil Gould ultimatum that sparked NRL ride, 500 games as coach, special feature

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After an initial approach to Cleary in August 2018, he sat down with O’Neill and Fletcher in October and talked about a return to the club.

“It was done in a matter of a week,” Fletcher said.

“I was fortunate to sign him. I negotiated a contract with him and his manager and he was an absolute pleasure to deal with.

“He was never a person looking for more money than he deserved. We were able to do that contract pretty quickly.”

But there was still one issue – Gould, the man who sacked him three years earlier.

It would be a rare occasion where Gould lost a power struggle.

Fletcher credited Gould with helping save the club, but he, and Gould himself, knew it was time for Penrith’s first premiership-winning coach to move on now that Cleary was back.

The club trusted Cleary to be the main man.

“He couldn’t coach under the guidance of Phil Gould so the chairman rang me and said he’d rung all the board and the board were unanimous that one of them had to go and they decided it was Phil this time,” Fletcher said.

“The chairman rang me and said Ivan can’t go on under the circumstances. I brought Phil in on a Tuesday morning to stand him down and we came to an agreement and Phil left the organisation that day.

“Phil knew it was coming. It was all over within 10 minutes and we got on with it and Ivan was in charge.

“He didn’t need Phil’s help, and as it turned out that was proven. His first year back wasn’t real brilliant, but once he settled down and put his systems into place and his own coaches underneath him, well, the statistics are there to tell you that he knows what he’s doing.

“It was one of the most major decisions the club ever made.”

By the end of 2021, Cleary had lost the “next Brian Smith” tag after Penrith’s grand final win over Souths.

He would go on to guide the side to three more titles as the team became the most dominant seen in Australian rugby league since the St George side of the 1950s and 60s.

Fletcher said none of it would have happened had the club not made the decision to take control of the club off Gould and hand the keys to Cleary.

“If he doesn’t come back we don’t win all those comps,” Fletcher said.

“Decisions had to be made and players had to go as well. And that was all under Ivan’s watch. He had to make some big decisions with players that were at the time probably overpaid and weren’t performing to their best.”

After the Panthers finished a disappointing 10th in Cleary’s first season back at the club in 2019, he knew he had to move players on.

Established first graders Reagan Campbell-Gillard, James Maloney, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak and Waqa Blake were let go for the 2020 season.

They were on good deals at the Panthers, which meant the club had to pay portions of their salaries while they were playing for their new clubs, Campbell-Gillard in particular, who Penrith would pay $300,000 to play against them in 2020 after he went to Parramatta.

They were all Gould signings, and it was a gusty move by Cleary to move on Campbell-Gillard who was a NSW representative at the time.

Cleary decided two young local juniors, Spencer Leniu and Stephen Crichton, could replace Campbell-Gillard and Blake.

But Cleary’s moves came with some risk.

“The next three years we played a million dollars under the salary cap because we had to pay other clubs for players that we let go. If we hadn’t done that we wouldn’t have won the comps. So he had to fix all that up,” Fletcher said.

“So it would be the biggest decision in the club’s history to bring Ivan back.

“If we hadn’t of done that I wouldn’t know where we’d be today. I know we wouldn’t have won four comps. I doubt whether we’d have won one.”

CLEARY’S SIMPLE STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS

So what makes Cleary so good?

The players know exactly where they stand at all times, never confused about their roles.

“If your message is clear and direct and you know exactly what you’re saying, which he does, you don’t need to scream and tear the paint off the walls,” Panthers forward Scott Sorensen told foxsports.com.au when talking about Cleary’s communication.

“It’s just got to be sharp, direct and clear. It gives you trust to go out there and do your job. And if I do my job for the team, the rest will take care of itself.

“He’s obviously done that with our culture. Everything’s just very clear, very simple and very direct and very honest, and that goes a long way to the success.”

Champion fullback Dylan Edwards told foxsports.com.au that Cleary’s simple messaging ensured his players took to the field with a “clear mind”.

“They’re simple messages and they’re direct. They leave you clear and I suppose when you have a clear mind as a footy player, then the job becomes a bit easier,” Edwards said.

Edwards said Cleary’s man management was also exemplary.

This never more evident than when Edwards went through one of the toughest periods of his career. Being dropped by Cleary in 2019 after he lost confidence, particularly under the high ball.

Edwards reflected on that period of his career and how Cleary helped him come back to eventually win four premierships and become the NSW and Australian fullback.

And, again, it was a direct, easy to understand message.

“Honesty is what you want from a coach and he was honest with me from the start,” Edwards said of his dropping.

“He sat me down and told me where I’d be playing, and I wasn’t playing first grade. He told me the news straight away, he was honest with me, which is important when the difficult conversations arise and he was that.

“He just told me straight and what I needed to address and that’s pretty much all you need to do really. He’d just watch me and critique me if he needed to.”

As the years have gone on and Edwards became Penrith’s greatest ever fullback, he revealed the boss doesn’t actually need to say much to him, football-wise, anymore.

“He doesn’t often say a lot to me, personally,” Edwards said.

“He lends his eyes and his ears when he needs me. But just the cool, calm demeanour he brings, it’s a calming influence and he never seems too flustered.

“He has the odd blow up when he needs to though.

“Whenever he sees something, says something, and he’s comfortable doing that. He’s done it his whole career. He says what he means, he doesn’t try to put any sort of spin on it.”

The result of these coaching methods is a team that would do anything for their coach

Sorensen said Cleary made him want to “run through a brick wall” every time he took to the field while Edwards praised the manner in which he holds himself.

“I think his great strength is his consistency and how he acts and reacts to things. You never walk on eggshells around him, you sort of know what you’re going to get, and I find that really inspiring as a leader,” Edwards said.

“The way he’s able to lead us as a team, as a club and me as an individual has been pretty instrumental.”

And it’s not only with the playing group that Cleary had a profound impact.

When he came back to Penrith, it was not the unified operation of today.

One of his first tasks was to get the whole footy department on board together.

“Before Ivan went back to Penrith, there used to be staff in one part who wouldn’t talk to another section and that just doesn’t work. You’ve got to have them all together and he’s able to get all that done because he’s just a likeable person,” Fletcher said.

“That’s where Ivan is such a good coach. There’s more to it than coaching the players.

You got to coach the wives, the families and everybody’s got to get on board. And he’s terrific at that and his wife (Bec) is terrific at it behind the scenes as well.”

THE SNUB THAT STILL STINGS THE PANTHERS

Cleary has no doubt been the best coach in the NRL since 2020.

Since he came back to Penrith he’s won an amazing 73 per cent of his games.

It’s an amazing statistic considering the winning record of other legendary coaches like Craig Bellamy (68 per cent), Wayne Bennett (59 per cent) and ARL Coach of the Century Jack Gibson (62 per cent).

But during Penrith’s dynasty, he’s only won Dally M Coach of the Year once, in 2020.

“It’s pretty hard to believe,” Fletcher said.

“I don’t think there’s been a better coach in the last four or five years than him, so it’s ridiculous the way they judge those sort of things. They’ll give a first-year coach the Coach of the Year because he runs fourth or fifth.

“He wins the comp for the fourth time in a row and he’s not good enough. When you create history year after year, you must be the best.”

Since 2020, Cleary has had to deal with losing State of Origin players like Matt Burton, Kurt Capewell, Stephen Crichton, Jarome Luai, Api Koroisau, Spencer Leniu and J’Maine Hopgood, along with ineligible Origin-standard players James Fisher-Harris and Viliame Kikau.

He’s also had to keep the club successful without assistant coaches Cameron Ciraldo and Andrew Webster who won the Dally M Coach of the Year at the Warriors in 2023.

“People always speak about the success and talk about the players and talk about the club, but I feel like Ivan doesn’t get mentioned enough,” Sorensen said.

“He’s done an incredible job to get the right people here in the club and in the team.

“I’m just forever grateful for him. I would not be playing first grade. I would not have the success I’ve had. I would not have the opportunities that I’ve been given here, international level and outside of football, without him.”

SO WHAT DOES CLEARY THINK ABOUT THE MILESTONE

Cleary keeps his cards close to his chest, publicly.

He rarely gives anything away, which can be frustrating to fans wanting to know more about him.

It’s far easier to interview Nathan.

When he was in his first season at Penrith in 2012, this writer was set to interview him ahead of a trial game against Newcastle in Port Macquarie.

One of the club’s media people asked me how good my knowledge of rugby league was.

“He just hates stupid questions,” she warned.

Ahead of his 500th game as a first grade coach this week, Cleary senior typically downplayed the occasion.

“It doesn’t matter. I guess I’m old fashioned. Milestones don’t really mean that much. I’m glad I’m still here and I appreciate everyone for helping along the way,” he said at a press conference on Sunday.

The 55-year-old did acknowledge how ruthless first grade coaching is in the NRL, however.

“I’m glad I survived that long,” he said.

“I must say it’s a surprise, but it’s honestly just another game. The most important thing is we play well. I’m lucky that I like what I do. I feel privileged to be in this position.”

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing and Cleary opened up about his private battle with depression in his 2024 memoir, Not Everything Counts but Everything Matters.

He revealed that he suffered from mental health issues in 2019 due to mounting coaching pressures, intense scrutiny over coaching his son, and poor initial team results.

He wrote about wanting to stay in bed only two months into his fresh five-year contract to coach the Panthers in 2019, saying: “I actually started taking antidepressants”.

“If we didn’t succeed in 2020, I was going to give it away.

“At the time, I would have (walked away from the game). I don’t know where I would have gone next, I really wasn’t worrying about the future.’’

Cleary will become just the seventh coach to take charge of 500 games when the Panthers take on Melbourne Storm at AAMI Park on Thursday night.

He joins an exclusive group of premiership coaches to have reached 500 games, which includes Wayne Bennett (983* matches coached), Tim Sheens (693), Craig Bellamy (625*), Brian Smith (601), Ricky Stuart (564*) and Des Hasler (506)

At the end of the day, Cleary’s just a normal bloke.

“He loves having a beer with the boys and he’s good company and that’s why everybody likes him,” Fletcher said.

“He’s a wonderful guy. I had a great time with him.”