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Hooked: Griffin's fate sealed inside Suncorp Stadium dressing-room
By Adam Pengilly
The clock is winding down and the Panthers have just been belted by a rampant Broncos when Anthony Griffin walks into the away dressing shed at Suncorp Stadium with ample time left in the game.
His team has been beaten, the result beyond doubt. But there's more than just a minute or two left. There's enough time for a side like his to score a couple of tries. Maybe three. Add a bit of respectability to the scoreboard.
Griffin doesn't bother to watch.
CCTV footage captured by the host broadcaster inside the room - and dug up by Fairfax Media - shows the Penrith coach ambling back into the rooms at a ground where he forged his NRL career with little clue how his side plays out the best part of the last six or seven minutes.
He might as well have kept walking into the next phase of his career after that night.
Griffin lost his job on Monday with more than two years to run on his contract, sacked with his team in a share of fourth and just four weeks away from a finals series in which they could beat anyone on their day.
But the biggest surprise to those inside the four walls at Penrith is it happened four weeks out from the finals and not four months.
In a rugby league rumour mill which just keeps churning out innuendo, only one has kept burning all year: that Griffin was on the nose at Penrith.
His boss, the Panthers executive general manager Phil Gould, has denied it, most emphatically on his usual appearance on Channel Nine's 100% Footy as recently as a month ago. The Panthers' deputy chairman Greg Alexander denied it as little as a couple of weeks ago.
They can't deny it any longer.
It'll be painted as a Gould decision, but the board had just as much as say in Griffin's fate as anyone else. They'll shoulder his hefty payout, tipped to be more than $1.5 million for the remaining two years of his contract, but can afford to.
Their biggest fear was another meek week one or week two finals exit doing the same thing as the last two years. They can't stand for that. And don't want it.
They've got a better team this year than the one that crashed out to Brisbane in week two last year. They feared they were going down the same route again and think the gamble this will be pitched as is not a gamble at all.
Gould drove a coaching tweak a couple of months ago, about the same time Griffin's captain Peter Wallace hung up the boots and moved into an assistant coaching role. Gould wanted new caretaker coach Cameron Ciraldo, another assistant, and Wallace to have an increased role.
Griffin, cut from the old school cloth, pushed back.
But Gould and the board are his superiors - and they have final say. It ends with Griffin, who has a career winning percentage the envy of many of his rivals, out of work.
Will Ciraldo get the job beyond this year's finals? Who knows.
Griffin fronted his last press conference, like he has done so many times this year, as a winner on Sunday. And a winner from a near improbable situation too, this time running down the Raiders despite a 14-point half-time deficit.
But not even winning these days means you can turn up to your job on Monday.
He spoke about the rest of the year. How he wasn't too concerned about the slow starts, which have become Penrith's trademark. How something was building at the foot of the mountains, maybe the start of a climb to the premiership summit.
By the next afternoon he was out of a job.
He was told the news when Gould summoned him and his manager Wayne Beavis to a meeting which was to bear the bad news. Griffin is said to have not taken it well. Why would he?
Decisions like the one to play Tyrone Peachey at fullback for the past two weeks after the Brisbane debacle have baffled some. He's brilliant and belligerent at his best, but has a blunder in him too. Dallin Watene-Zelezniak was a revelation at No.1 during Dylan Edwards' absence, but came back from injury on the wing. It was another nail.
Of Griffin's staff, referees consultant Luke Phillips has left for the Dragons mid-season. Rehab guru Adrian Jimenez found a new home at the Eels. Penrith's top brass feared an exodus of players was about to happen too.
Nathan Cleary's contract hangs like a noose hovering over the necks of the top brass, so demanding is the fan base to keep the newly-minted NSW No.7 at the club. This might help, it might not.
But still this is a coach who was about to take a club to the finals for the third straight year in three years with the club.
It's just that Penrith's powerbrokers knew they didn't want to watch how it ends.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/ho...rp-stadium-dressing-room-20180806-p4zvsi.html
By Adam Pengilly
The clock is winding down and the Panthers have just been belted by a rampant Broncos when Anthony Griffin walks into the away dressing shed at Suncorp Stadium with ample time left in the game.
His team has been beaten, the result beyond doubt. But there's more than just a minute or two left. There's enough time for a side like his to score a couple of tries. Maybe three. Add a bit of respectability to the scoreboard.
Griffin doesn't bother to watch.
CCTV footage captured by the host broadcaster inside the room - and dug up by Fairfax Media - shows the Penrith coach ambling back into the rooms at a ground where he forged his NRL career with little clue how his side plays out the best part of the last six or seven minutes.
He might as well have kept walking into the next phase of his career after that night.
Griffin lost his job on Monday with more than two years to run on his contract, sacked with his team in a share of fourth and just four weeks away from a finals series in which they could beat anyone on their day.
But the biggest surprise to those inside the four walls at Penrith is it happened four weeks out from the finals and not four months.
In a rugby league rumour mill which just keeps churning out innuendo, only one has kept burning all year: that Griffin was on the nose at Penrith.
His boss, the Panthers executive general manager Phil Gould, has denied it, most emphatically on his usual appearance on Channel Nine's 100% Footy as recently as a month ago. The Panthers' deputy chairman Greg Alexander denied it as little as a couple of weeks ago.
They can't deny it any longer.
It'll be painted as a Gould decision, but the board had just as much as say in Griffin's fate as anyone else. They'll shoulder his hefty payout, tipped to be more than $1.5 million for the remaining two years of his contract, but can afford to.
Their biggest fear was another meek week one or week two finals exit doing the same thing as the last two years. They can't stand for that. And don't want it.
They've got a better team this year than the one that crashed out to Brisbane in week two last year. They feared they were going down the same route again and think the gamble this will be pitched as is not a gamble at all.
Gould drove a coaching tweak a couple of months ago, about the same time Griffin's captain Peter Wallace hung up the boots and moved into an assistant coaching role. Gould wanted new caretaker coach Cameron Ciraldo, another assistant, and Wallace to have an increased role.
Griffin, cut from the old school cloth, pushed back.
But Gould and the board are his superiors - and they have final say. It ends with Griffin, who has a career winning percentage the envy of many of his rivals, out of work.
Will Ciraldo get the job beyond this year's finals? Who knows.
Griffin fronted his last press conference, like he has done so many times this year, as a winner on Sunday. And a winner from a near improbable situation too, this time running down the Raiders despite a 14-point half-time deficit.
But not even winning these days means you can turn up to your job on Monday.
He spoke about the rest of the year. How he wasn't too concerned about the slow starts, which have become Penrith's trademark. How something was building at the foot of the mountains, maybe the start of a climb to the premiership summit.
By the next afternoon he was out of a job.
He was told the news when Gould summoned him and his manager Wayne Beavis to a meeting which was to bear the bad news. Griffin is said to have not taken it well. Why would he?
Decisions like the one to play Tyrone Peachey at fullback for the past two weeks after the Brisbane debacle have baffled some. He's brilliant and belligerent at his best, but has a blunder in him too. Dallin Watene-Zelezniak was a revelation at No.1 during Dylan Edwards' absence, but came back from injury on the wing. It was another nail.
Of Griffin's staff, referees consultant Luke Phillips has left for the Dragons mid-season. Rehab guru Adrian Jimenez found a new home at the Eels. Penrith's top brass feared an exodus of players was about to happen too.
Nathan Cleary's contract hangs like a noose hovering over the necks of the top brass, so demanding is the fan base to keep the newly-minted NSW No.7 at the club. This might help, it might not.
But still this is a coach who was about to take a club to the finals for the third straight year in three years with the club.
It's just that Penrith's powerbrokers knew they didn't want to watch how it ends.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/ho...rp-stadium-dressing-room-20180806-p4zvsi.html
