How Craig Bellamy’s Melbourne Storm inspired Ivan Cleary to create Penrith Panthers dynasty

Having steered Penrith to its fourth successive NRL grand final win, coach Ivan Cleary has become a rugby league legend. And, he reveals, it was Melbourne that drove his winning strategy.

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Ivan Cleary has guided the Penrith Panthers to a stunning run of four-straight NRL premierships. In this exclusive edited extract from Ivan’s new book Not Everything Counts ... But Everything Matters, he reveals the inspiration that helped create the Panthers dynasty.

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Every coach is a thief. We take ideas from each other, from those who have done it before, and bend them to suit our own needs and situation. Success leaves clues.

I’m attracted to consistency. Teams that just win and win, and do it over a long period. Teams that can succeed and still find the hunger to keep working hard every day.

When I think of the teams that have done this the best, I think of Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson and Melbourne Storm under Craig Bellamy.

In my early years of NRL coaching, the term ‘winning culture’ stuck with me. You would hear it a lot about Melbourne. I’m not sure if they said it about themselves, but the media – and other coaches and clubs – certainly did.

Craig Bellamy created a winning culture at the Storm that was the envy of the NRL. Picture: Getty Images

Their salary cap situation had helped them. But the thing I liked about Storm was that it was always so hard to beat.

Every game, no matter who they were playing, even during Origin when all their big guns like Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Greg Inglis were missing, mattered to them. They still found ways to win.

I don’t know Craig Bellamy. We had a very brief exchange on holidays in Hawks Nest one off-season early in my coaching career, and I thought he was a very down-to-earth guy. But that’s been our only real contact on a personal level. But I respect what he’s done greatly.

With what he’s achieved, he reminds me of New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.

Managers like them push the rules of the game as far as they can. If the governing body is too weak to police it, it’s not the coach’s fault. Every time the Storm had one of their wrestling moves banned, they’d move on to the next.

People don’t like that about the Storm – nor did I when we were getting beaten regularly by them – but I respect it.

Melbourne have been ahead of the curve for decades.

The Storm are never an easy game. If you beat them, they’ll make a point of getting square next time. You also don’t want to be playing them the week after a loss as they’ll be coming for you.

Ivan Cleary learned a lot about winning from the Melbourne Storm. Picture: NRL Photos

After being stripped of premiership points in 2010 for breaching the salary cap, which forced them to get rid of some players, the Storm made 10 preliminary finals in 13 years. That’s just ridiculous.

When we played them in the 2023 preliminary final, I told our players that I considered Melbourne to be my ‘inspiration’. Believe me, I haven’t always been so positive when talking about them to my team before big matches.

But I pointed out how we had beaten them twice that year, which showed how far we’d come as a team. A few years back, if you’d told me we could beat Melbourne twice, maybe three times in a row in a single year, I’d have said you were off your head.

Praising the Storm was also a way for me to plant an idea in the boys’ minds about how dangerous they could be, even if they weren’t playing that well. This was a preliminary final, and if any team could f--- us up, it was the Storm.

It worked: We won the match 38-4.

My aim for Penrith is for the club to become as consistent and feared as Melbourne and Manchester United.

SECOND COMING

Ivan Cleary returned to Penrith as coach in 2019 – after a stint from 2012-15 – and in beginning the cultural shift that turned the Panthers into a victory machine, Storm was his inspiration.

I needed to own our disappointing performance in the 2019 season, and I was determined we were going to turn things around in 2020.

Things had to change. I knew they could be better.

My main message to the players and the broader club was that having a strong culture multiplies talent, while a weak culture divides it.

I was clear about how we were going to do things and, importantly, made sure everyone was on the same page.

The beauty for us was we had immediate success: We started winning games and eventually booked a grand final appearance against Storm, the team I admired so much and whose consistency and professionalism I wanted to emulate.

But grand finals are different and our young team was given a lesson. The Storm bullied us, doing small things off the ball that we hadn’t seen during the regular season. It was the last match for their captain, Cameron Smith. He’s now a commentator, and I have to laugh when he calls our matches and highlights when we do something off the ball. Who does he think we learnt it from? Cameron was the best. I slept easier when he retired.

Cameron Smith was at the heart of Melbourne’s success. Picture: Getty Images

Melbourne had too many big-game players for us. They knew what they could get away with.

We were too nice, and too nervous. We weren’t deep enough in attack, which played into the hands of the Storm’s fast-moving defence. We earned opportunities but couldn’t nail them. They seemed to be taking every chance they had, which put scoreboard pressure on us, too. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, we were down 26-0.

We steadied and came home with a wet sail to eventually narrow the gap to just six points, and we had one last throw of the dice as the siren sounded, but it was all too late.

I admired the way we’d fought back, and I knew we would use the lessons we’d learnt on the road ahead.

We may not have won the grand final, but we had a far more important victory: The changes we made in 2019, in both the roster and our culture, had turned us around and set us on the right path.

From the Panther’s mouth ... Ivan Cleary’s Not Everything Counts But Everything Matters.

This is an exclusive edited extract from Not Everything Counts ... But Everything Matters, by Ivan Cleary. It will be published by HarperCollins on October 16 and is available to pre-order now.

Ivan Cleary will launch Not Everything Counts ... But Everything Matters with a free in-conversation event at Penrith Rugby Leagues Club on October 16, 5;30-6:30pm. Get your free ticket here.

Catch Ivan and Nathan on Mark Bouris’ podcast Straight Talk, wherever you get your pods.

Originally published as How Craig Bellamy’s Melbourne Storm inspired Ivan Cleary to create Penrith Panthers dynasty