F.O Cleary

[Penrose Warrior]

Not keen to go down this path again (it's been done to death) but the fact we punted a guy who had taken us to finals every year apart from 2006 (points deduction) and 2009 (Sonny Fai death) for a guy who had never coached an NRL game was the main issue. It was OK to say Ivan isn't our guy, but insane to think Bluey was.

There were people (John Hart being the most vocal) who knew he had to stay, but Scurrah and Eric Watson had an agenda against Ivan, because he wasn't a suck up.

I dunno where all these comments about us being boring grinders come from, though. In 2007 we were third in points for behind the cheats and Manly. In 2011 the highest points for was Manly with 539, and we had 504. We were 4th in 2006, 5th in 2010, and 9th in 2008.

 

[Blair]

Perhaps the bigger crime was the not bringing Ivan back rather than the letting him go.

 

[Penrose Warrior]

Perhaps the bigger crime was the not bringing Ivan back rather than the letting him go.

Yep, I'd forgotten about that. My therapist said it was for the best that I didn't continue to post about us taking Bluey and Kearney over Cleary at different times

 

[Blair]

During Cleary's reign the NZ Prime Minister seemed a bit keener on the Warriors than the All Blacks.

So there you go.

 

[Blair]

Yep, I'd forgotten about that. My therapist said it was for the best that I didn't continue to post about us taking Bluey and Kearney over Cleary at different times

At home, the 30-13 final win over the hot-shot Roosters (which was closer than it sounds, not clinched until Kirk's runaway intercept) will always be the highest bar we can aspire to. 2008 was the year.

It's only bettered by those GF Qualifier wins in Sydney and Melbourne, and our two GFs. The upset win over the Tigers in 2011 is my personal favourite. I was there.

 

[Manu Vatuvei]

Saying we weren’t perceived as boring is revisionism. It was a popular opinion at the time (all good if you didn’t personally agree, but that was a very popular opinion). Simply quoting how many points we scored says little about the style we played. A lot related to the halves we had back then (Witt/Fien/Rovelli/Seymour) who probably outdid themselves in terms of output but were not terribly exciting or creative players. Hence the ‘Bomb to Manu’ meme - getting to tackle 5 and bombing left was legit a big part of our attack back then.

 

[Manu Vatuvei]

On the flipside, in retrospect it makes it all the more impressive that we were a solid team back then even with a lot of journeyman players, particularly in the halves. Those were early signs of Cleary’s ability to get a team to play for him and to buy in to a style, even if it wasn’t razzle dazzle.

 

[Penrose Warrior]

Saying we weren’t perceived as boring is revisionism. It was a popular opinion at the time (all good if you didn’t personally agree, but that was a very popular opinion). Simply quoting how many points we scored says little about the style we played. A lot related to the halves we had back then (Witt/Fien/Rovelli/Seymour) who probably outdid themselves in terms of output but were not terribly exciting or creative players. Hence the ‘Bomb to Manu’ meme - getting to tackle 5 and bombing left was legit a big part of our attack back then.

OK, fair point. But as a fan, I never once remember being bored by my side. I distinctly remember the 8-6(?) game v the Storm at home in I think 08, which was a grind but it was enthralling. It was memorable, it was captivating. I don't remember giving a monkey's about where our points come from. I lived weekend to weekend, genuinely excited to see my side because they were always a chance of beating any team in the comp. It wasn't boring to me. To me, we used the most of the resources we had. We didn't have a king pin half (until 2010 Maloney then rookie SJ) so we played accordingly. I know people thought the bomb to Manu was boring, and fair enough. But for rugby league fans, there was so much else to like about our defensive structure, strong forwards, return carries from the back etc.

 

[TheDMC]

On the flipside, in retrospect it makes it all the more impressive that we were a solid team back then even with a lot of journeyman players, particularly in the halves. Those were early signs of Cleary’s ability to get a team to play for him and to buy in to a style, even if it wasn’t razzle dazzle.

Very true. Expectations for the team back then were high I recall, perhaps unrealistically, but was in part why many fans (and ultimately the club) didn't see Cleary as the pathway to a title, despite the solid results.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

I don’t remember the Cleary sides as boring, but I do remember a general sentiment that they were good but not great and lacked the elite X factor to get over the line at the pointy end of a finals series. But as has also been mentioned they were doing that with fairly ordinary halves combinations and they made a grand final half a season after SJ debuted. So in hindsight Ivan was probably doing ad well as he could with the cattle he had and we blew a premiership window big time.

 

[Manu Vatuvei]

Very true. Expectations for the team back then were high I recall, perhaps unrealistically, but was in part why many fans (and ultimately the club) didn't see Cleary as the pathway to a title, despite the solid results.

Absolutely. Yes we had disappointing 2004 and 2005 seasons leading into Cleary taking over, but there was still a residual optimism from 2001-2003 that we had a decent squad and should still be aiming high. You have to keep in mind that as much as the Warriors have "always been a disappointment" there's a massive difference between 2001-2011 (7 finals appearances in 11 years) and 2012-2022 (1 finals appearance in 11 years). Our expectations are absurdly low now. In the Cleary years we were still looking to get back to the high of the early 2000s and still honestly had aspirations of being an elite side. I think there was also still a big element of wanting to bring through elite Kiwi talent as well.

Plus, we had Wiki and Price who had started here the year before Cleary did, and then from 2008 on we had (or thought we had) an absolute bumper crop of youngsters coming through and all of the excitement of dominating the early years of the NYC. Optimism still existed back then and the flipside was people getting shitty at Clearly bringing in Aussie journeymen rather than trusting our youngsters. Of course, we're at a point now where that seems ridiculously picky and we'll take wins however we can get them.

 

[sup42]

Cleary coached the offloads and second phase out of the Warriors forwards. That is to this day a natural part of the NZ league game, second phase.

So he brought in Mateo to offload as a point of difference which saw Mateo lead the NRL in oflloads, not surprising since he was the only player with a license to do it.

The Cleary back lines had serious issues with passing the ball to the edges of the team.

Which is why Manu Vatuvei was a kick specialist and very rarely seen worked into space or one on ones.
We kicked to Manu because we did not have the fluid ball movement to get it to him..something that became evident later when Manu was too old to jump about the place....he started seeing ball starvation next to centers (post Cleary, but the principle is the same) who were not able to feed Manu, nor ball players that could set him up, because he was quick and powerful, not just powerful...at the Storm he would have scored endlessly.

Kearny came in and did the same as Cleary, banned the offloads. He too was called boring, and safe etc.

Ivan did try bring in Inu to give some Xfactor to his backline and when Inu played well, the Warriors won games....because he was a point of difference to the safe boring style.

Cleary would run endless set up plays through the forwards with second man plays and dropping a ball back on the inside to a charging back rower.

It was not until Cappy came along that a coached proved that New Zealand League players could in fact play block shapes and run trick plays, create overlaps, use cut out balls and look like an Australian RL team on attack.

And it is interesting now that Cappy is back the fluid shapes and nice set plays are back under Webster.

Webster looks like he has banned the offload as well, but what makes him better than all the others is that he has replaced the low percentage plays with ball playing forwards that pass two wide of the ruck and stretch the defence.

Also of interest to me in the evolution of the NZ game is that a downstream unseen consequence of Cleary banning offloads/jungle ball....is that Rugby League changed forever in lots of ways, not least the support play disappeared from the NZ game. You just stopped seeing young footballers chasing the offload.

It was as if discipline and safety and game plan, had coached the instinct out of our dna.