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The aimless Panthers keep going backwards but Ivan Cleary escapes any pressure
August 06, 2019
A year ago, the Monday after round 20, Penrith general manager Phil Gould called in Anthony Griffin and sacked him.
The Panthers were coming off a 40-31 win against Canberra and were fifth and on their way to the finals.
The Monday after round 20 this year Penrith fell out of the top eight after a loss to 15th placed Canterbury and their hapless coach Ivan Cleary seemed to be struggling for answers.
But his job was safe.
A year later and Penrith are worse.
The Panthers had 56 per cent of the ball against Canterbury on Saturday and lost. They had 52 tackles in Canterbury’s 20m zone, to the Bulldogs’ 16, and got outscored three tries to one.
The more athletic of the two teams, Penrith rolled down field much more easily than Canterbury, as evidenced by the fact they ran for more metres than the Bulldogs, 1576m to 1283m, but did not have the first clue how to attack once they got in good field position.
They completed more sets and made less tackles but could not get it done.
If it was not the worst coaching performance of the season, it might be the dumbest.
The natural ballplayer in the club, James Maloney, is not being ignored but has been squeezed out. Maloney has already been shopped to France for next year and meantime has been reduced to a passenger in the team he should be running.
Maloney is aggressive in attack. He comes from the same thinking as Melbourne, where everything runs off Cameron Smith, or the Roosters, where Cooper Cronk sets the tempo.
Yet on Saturday Penrith simply ran shift to shift to shift, so bogged down and over-coached with block plays they might as well have lined up like ducks on a wall for the Canterbury defence.
There was no point of attack. No putting numbers on Jack Cogger, the Bulldogs’ rookie five-eighth, or stacking numbers on one side of the field to take advantage of Canterbury’s defensive weaknesses.
It was wish and hope stuff, side to side, the kind that works on the whiteboard but fails in execution.
Canterbury was, simply, too brave for them.
For reasons nobody is quite sure Penrith returned to the same attacking style that got their season off to such a stinker.
Maloney was taken out of it and so the Panthers were, once again, slow and unimaginative.
If only it was that simple, though.
At the same time Cleary is making questionable game plans on the field he is making questionable decisions off it.
Reagan Campbell-Gillard has been shopped around most of the season and is on the verge of signing with Parramatta. The two clubs are trying to work out a deal.
Campbell-Gillard is 26 and last year signed a six-year extension when he was a State of Origin player under the former coach Griffin.
No reason has been given for Cleary’s lack of enthusiasm.
Campbell-Gillard is also confused, saying little more to friends than he believes the coach is “off me”.
Cleary is retooling Penrith’s roster on the fly. AAP Image/Joel Carrett.
The art of coaching is to bring those players in, to find a way to get the best out of them.
If the Panthers are confused as to what that looks like, take a peep at what Des Hasler is doing at Manly. A strong, clear gameplan, maximising the talents of the players he inherited.
Not at Penrith, where Cleary has somehow convinced the Penrith board their club is in need of a rebuild.
So Waqa Blake was released mid-season to Parramatta. Dallin Watene-Zelezniak released to Canterbury.
Jack Hetherington will be off to Canberra. Maloney gone to France. Campbell-Gillard being shopped around.
Cleary must have forgot the roster he is clearing out was in fifth spot this time last year, and looked set for a finals charge before the shock sacking of the coaching, or can only coach one way.
Which means a long, laborious rebuild.
The message to Penrith fans is clear: wait.
The club is trusting in their coach who is shopping around a 26-year-old State of Origin prop because they can’t get along.
The same coach who signed Russell Packer and Ben Matulino to Wests Tigers last year, on bigger contracts than Campbell-Gillard currently demands, yet who are struggling to do what Michael Maguire wants from them now at the Tigers.
What if Cleary is not the coach Penrith believe he is?
Cleary was brought in because Griffin was sacked because the club did not believe he had what it took to take them to the next level.
Yet, and exactly a year later, Cleary’s intent is a rebuild.
A team fighting for a top four, under the new coach, is now asking for time.
It was a lot of faith to put in a coach like Cleary who has yet to win a premiership.
Cleary is an unproven premiership winning coach.
He has coached 314 NRL games, winning slightly less than half, 148 but has won no premierships.
Every premiership winning coach in the history of the game has won his maiden inside his first 250 games.
The most any coach went was John Lang, who went 249 games before claiming the crown in 2003.
In the faint hope left for Penrith it must be said Lang did it with the Panthers.
You’ve got to hang on to something, right?
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