Go have a lie down..but before you do, read this article by Roy Masters. It gives an alternate point of view about Gus' to what nearly everyone else dishes up in the media.
TEARS OF THE RINGMASTER
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July 5, 2004
Origin's greatest promoter Phil Gould will walk away this week. He will be missed, says Roy Masters, by those whose opinion matters most: the players.
Tears welled in his eyes, words caught in his throat and long-term insiders, such as Ricky Stuart, admitted they had witnessed a side of Phil Gould they had not seen before.
Out of armour, having cast aside the combustibility and condescension he has forged into his sword and shield as NSW State of Origin coach, Gould is a gentle, if conflicted, soul.
When NSW Premier Bob Carr presented a massive gold-and-diamond ring to him at an intimate lunch in a Sydney restaurant on Friday, Gould, who retires this week as the longest-serving and most successful Origin coach, said: "This is beautiful. Mr Premier, that's blown me away. I don't know how to respond to it.
"Origin football has been a very special part of my life. I don't get a lot of raps these days, I suppose it's a bit like being premier."
Acknowledging the presence at the lunch of NSW five-eighth Brad Fittler, with whom he has shared a 16-year partnership as player and coach, Blues captain Danny Buderus, his long-term manager Wayne Beavis and Stuart, who will succeed him as Origin coach, Gould said: "I will miss it but it's time to move on. The best bloke for the job replaces me."
Then, rolling the ring in his fingers, looking like a little boy who had finally been given the present he'd always wanted, he said: "I'm honestly awed by this. Mum will be delighted when I show it to her tomorrow."
The man who organised the presentation and paid for the ring - Mark Bouris, founder of Wizard Financial Services, which sponsors the Blues - summed up the Gould legacy best.
"No one has the capacity to manufacture the theatre, drama and emotion around Origin football like he has," Bouris said. "He hasn't cared about the risk to himself or the personal loss of putting himself out there. He's presented himself as a target for Queensland and his enemies, making it easy for them to take pot shots at him."
Pointing to a huge, framed montage of NSW victories and defeats, together with the signatures of 33 Origin players who Gould has coached in two stints for the Blues, Bouris said: "That's why players want to recognise him and why we've had them ringing up to sign it."
Gould has always wanted the NSW furnace at full blast but has been willing to live with the collateral damage when he has miscalculated and sent the blaze the wrong way.
But he has been a firewall for his players and they recognise this. As Bouris said: "Players sense what he is doing for them. They have the best antennas, even though they can't articulate them."
The best players have great radar, detecting duplicity and deceit in a millisecond, consistent with a game where success is built on capitalising quickly on the weakness of others.
They instinctively know when Gould is playing mind games - his finger-jabbing confrontation with Andrew Johns outside a Coogee hotel; his newspaper columns criticising other halves, such as Brett Kimmorley and Trent Barrett - but they respond because they recognise its purpose is positive.
Johns describes Gould as more tormentor than mentor. While Michael Hagan, Johns's club coach and boss of Queensland, can sense unerringly when someone needs a hug or a kind word, he says Gould motivates by challenge.
As Bouris said: "Players cut through the bubble and swirl and know what Gus is doing, but he knows they know."
What's a successful coach but one so convincing that even he comes to believe the bluff and turns it into truth?
Gould already has one giant ring, a massive horseshoe commemorating a big win in the Golden Slipper years ago.
Stories have long circulated about his gambling but it's hard to escape the notion the bets aren't so much a means to add to his fortune as they are lubricants for his competitive nature.
He is also counter-culture. Last year, when Bulldogs forward Willie Mason was a lovable, Afro-haired, taxi-fare-evading rascal, Gould would not let him within a mile of the NSW team. This year, with Mason in the newspapers for using banned drugs and visiting a brothel, Gould has embraced him.
Impulsive and intuitive, Gould's been known to change his mind hourly, if not in mid-sentence. Sometimes, he seems to stir up team tension just so he can creatively defuse it, an enemy inside his own skin, swallowing stress by the bucketful.
But if he wears the cape of villainy around his shoulders, it's to get the media off the backs of the players and the players off the back pages of the media.
This week he has been curiously silent, refusing all interviews, possibly because he is enjoying himself a final luxury.
More likely, it's because Wednesday night's decider was a sell-out days ago.
Stuart said: "Sometimes, he has put himself as a target to promote Origin. By doing it, there has been a lot of personal strain. The competitive nature of the media (particularly the Sunday newspapers, with Gould writing for The Sun-Herald) has added to the strain. But his results have proved that no one has got him. He'll prove to be one of the greatest Origin coaches ever."
Fittler said: "Every now and then, someone comes along to re-ignite Origin football. It was Wally Lewis, then Mark Geyer, but Gus has been the one."
If paranoia fuels his legendary insomnia, he uses it to satisfy his intense work ethic. Friends driving by his southern Sydney home in the early hours marvel at the flickering TV light behind the blinds; his emails and text messages arrive near dawn.
Buderus said: "I didn't realise how much information one man has about the game and his insights into it. He knows what a player can do and can't do. He knows how to get a player at the peak of power for a contest."
David Gyngell, boss of Gould's employer Channel Nine - to which Gould refused to speak at Origin training yesterday - attests to his 24/7 hours and also his power of persuasion, saying: "After hearing him speak once, Kerry Packer told me it was one of the best speeches he's ever heard."
Beavis agreed: "He spoke at [Luke] Ricketson's testimonial and it was the best I'd ever heard. I told him later, 'I want you to speak at my funeral'."
Trying to obtain an insight into a eulogy he would never hear, Beavis asked Gould: "What are you going to say about me?"
Gould replied: "It won't matter. There'll only be me and Gail (Beavis's partner) there."
On Wednesday night at Telstra Stadium, Gould will sit on the bench, gazing at the world with upturned chin, as if daring a Queenslander to take a shot at it.
When the video referee debates a try, he'll stand fixed and stare upward, a blue F 1/11 seemingly ready to rage.
But the coming conflict in his life is a career away from the decision making of the sidelines.
In Norse mythology, the god Odin was simultaneously blessed and cursed by his quest for knowledge and detail.
It enabled him to achieve wonderful things, yet it also tortured him with the foreknowledge of his death. Similarly, Gould will wrestle with his memories of Origin football. We haven't seen the last of the ultimate contrarian.
