Mastermind Phil Gould facing a shift in power at Penrith, writes Paul Kent
Phil Gould is rugby league’s most brilliant and complex thinker. The one thing he has always understood, even better than the game of rugby league, was the game of power, writes Paul Kent.
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Phil Gould is rugby league’s most brilliant and complex thinker.
He knows the game in ways Wayne Bennett never will. This new generation of coaches preach from a hymnbook written by Warren Ryan and improved upon by Gould.
Gould took Ryan’s science and added a bedside manner. He is two-parts actor, three parts psychologist, half politician and twenty per cent scallywag.
Gould was in Kerry Packer’s Park St headquarters one day, in the city, for a meeting.
The meeting ended and Packer, fascinated by Gould, stood and said, “I’ll drive you home.”
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Packer drove Gould to his Yowie Bay home. They listened to Kevin “Bloody” Wilson over the car speakers all the way. George Freeman once owned the home Gould now lives in, Freeman selling it to Bruce Galea, the son of casino king Perce Galea, before Gould bought it.
Packer dropped off Gould and Gould watched his taillights disappear before he called a cab to take him back to Park St where his car was parked.
The one thing Gould has always understood, even better than the game of rugby league, was the game of power.
The events of this week were perfect Gould.
It began when news leaked that Gould had secretly agreed with Bennett last year to coach Penrith and it peaked with revelations later in the week that Gould, under the coach who did get the job, Ivan Cleary, was now in a heavily restricted role.
As the Penrith powerbroker, how would this sit?
Nobody believes Gould is comfortable in this reduced role.
Cleary denied Thursday that a condition of his return was Gould’s removal from the running of the football team. They still work together on Penrith’s recruitment committee, but the fact a committee is now required at all speaks to Gould’s lessening influence.
He returned to Penrith as coaching co-ordinator in 2011 and over the years his role grew into the all-powerful general manager of football role. Gould was handed the keys and his achievements since have been many.
He was responsible for fixing Penrith’s salary cap mess. The Panthers had too many bad footballers and the good ones they had were on too much money.
He called on James Packer to loan the club money for its rugby league academy. He lobbied politicians, took over the hiring and firing on the player roster, advised coaches, sacked coaches and turned the Panthers into one of the most professionally run clubs in the NRL.
He did so well he might have done himself out of a job.
And in among all that Gould sacked Cleary in 2015.
He spoke to Cleary midway through the 2015 season, telling him he thought he was tired, and Cleary came back a week later and told Gould, according to Gould, that he was carrying on.
Concerned Cleary had another season to go, Gould pulled the trigger.
An alternative version can be found whispered around the game.
This alternative version goes that Cleary, frustrated with Gould meddling in team affairs and acting on his own on with recruitment and retention, got careless one afternoon and criticised Gould to someone who he thought was a confidant.
Word quickly reached Gould. He called Cleary in and asked if they had a problem.
Cleary said no.
Within days Cleary was gone. Sacked because he was “tired”.
If nothing else, who held the power was clear.
At least then.
Cleary was reappointed for this season when Penrith chairman Dave O’Neill offered him his old job in, what we were to learn, was the same week that Gould offered Bennett the job.
It raises several questions.
For reasons not explained this week the Panthers sided with O’Neill over Gould, perhaps for the first time, if not the last.
Bennett is a master at man management, in a way Gould never could be, and it is long credited to his success. In an odd way their union was seen as an ideal partnership if they could get it to work.
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Yet Gould was forced to call Bennett and tell him the job was taken. Why a call to Bennett and not Cleary.
Neither had signed anything. The phone call could just as easily have been made to Cleary, who was having trouble extricating from his Wests Tigers contract and whose release only eventuated after Penrith compensated the Tigers.
In many ways, Bennett would have been the cleaner choice.
The clubs decision to go with Cleary was the first concrete example of the club ruling against Gould on football matters. Yet as Penrith struggled with a 1-2 start and Bennett’s Rabbitohs go into this afternoon’s game against Manly 3-0, and joint competition leaders, fortune has left Gould in a strong position.
Any failings at Penrith now and, well, don’t forget Gould had Bennett ready to go.
Gould does not need to speak to it all. He understands the power in mystery.
Earlier this week, on 100% Footy, Gould recalled a Paul Newman interview where Newman was asked what made a great actor.
“Whatever you’re great at,” Newman said, “do it once.”
If you’re good at crying, Gould quoted Newman, cry once. If you’re good at smiling, smile once.
Leave the audience wanting more, Newman was saying. Their imagination does the rest.
Gould was a clever ball-playing backrower. He had a generous talent for playing short sides. He was a strong kicker in general player and an occasional goalkicker back in the old toe-poke days. He was integral to implementing Ryan’s gameplan as part of Newtown’s 1981 grand final drive, which required his football smarts.
He was said to have studied law at Sydney University but did not complete the degree.
Instead he found another way to make a quid. A professional footballer and poker machine salesman, he retired to take up coaching and in 1988 became the youngest ever non-playing premiership winning coach, at 31.
“He is the smartest bloke in rugby league,” says his manager Wayne Beavis.
In the complexity of the NRL’s narrative, filled with backroom conversations and private agendas, Beavis says Gould’s genius is to simplify it all.
“He treats it as a sport where everyone else treats it as a business,” he says. “He is not a complex bloke. That’s his greatest strength.”
Which might be the most confusing comment made yet.
Testimony to Gould’s smarts came with confirmation of Cronulla’s surreptitious attempt to woo Gould to the Sharks.
As the confusion about his role at Penrith was dissected and debated Gould refused to fill in the space and the Sharks took the bait, their interest genuine but swift.
The Sharks wondered if Gould was interested in doing a similar job at Cronulla as he had at Penrith.
It soon became apparent the Sharks could not afford him.
Naturally the conversation was quickly dismissed, tossed away as nothing more than old friends catching up.
Where it goes now is anybody’s guess. Power never rests.
And Gould is a workaholic at a club without a fulltime role.
BOYD EFFORTS RING ALARM BELLS AT BRONCOS
IT was the Bryce Cartwright moment that asks a whole lot of questions about what is going on at Brisbane.
Angus Crichton crashed over for the Sydney Roosters in Thursday night’s game and he went past Broncos captain Darius Boyd so fast he gave him a swift case of the cold.
Boyd came across in cover but did not even get involved in the tackle as Crichton stepped inside him with two broncos hanging on to him.
Was he looking to avoid contact, or merely guilty of over-reading the play?
That the video referee eventually deemed it a try because Crichton touched down on the tryline adds to the case that even minimal body contact from the Broncos captain might have avoided a four-pointer.
The benefit of the doubt for Boyd is harder to justify given it happened not once, but twice.
In the second half James Tedesco split the Broncos’ defence and rather than crash into him Boyd turned and threw his hands up to appeal to the referee for an obstruction.
Any notion of playing to the whistle was avoided, as Tedesco went past untouched to score.
While both examples can, and still might be, adequately explained and excused by anyone with a basic understanding of the game, they highlight a lack of physicality in what has been a disappointing start to the season for the Broncos.
Look at the effort of the respective fullbacks and it tells you everything you need to know about where the two clubs are currently at.
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