Loving Ivan already. No bullshit with thus guy
RIL 7 2017 - 8:35PM
Ivan Cleary's message to Wests Tigers stars: We want them here but they aren't indispensable
Michael Chammas
Michael Chammas
"The star of the team is the team." That has long been Ivan Cleary's coaching philosophy.
And he won't shy away from it as he approaches delicate discussions surrounding the future of Aaron Woods and James Tedesco.
"I would love Woodsy and Teddy to stay," Cleary told Fairfax Media at the team hotel in Townsville on the eve of his first match in charge of the Wests Tigers.
"They can be extremely influential in making this club the success it should be. But at the end of the day this will be their decision. What I have learned over the years is that players aren't indispensable, but I sincerely hope they stay.
"The players we are talking about, there is a fair bit of money there too. If these boys – and I want them to stay, don't get me wrong – but if they decide they don't want to be here, we'll forge ahead. The star of the team is the team. That's what I believe in."
And so begins the most pivotal period in the club's history since the joint venture's inception at the turn of the millennium.
"There's a lot of work to do. I know it's a big job, but I'm comfortable with that," Cleary said.
Just who else is comfortable with the magnitude of the task at hand is still to be determined. Cleary is a coach who won't lose sight through the dark. It's why he was appointed. He's also a realist.
"Change is not necessarily comfortable," he said.
"I would love all these players to stay – they have given good service to the club, played all their first-grade football here. But this place is not going to be the same as they knew it. Not everyone is into that.
"There are some decisions to make and I know there's been some confusion in the past. They've been quite open about that. I'm not going to hide that. But now there's some certainty with a new head coach coming in. Ultimately they'll make the decision if they want to be here or not.
"They have invested a lot of time into this club and the club has invested a lot of time into them as well. That shouldn't be forgotten, but it's a professional game and they have to make a decision on what suits them. We'll move forward whatever happens."
At a meeting with club powerbrokers at Wests Ashfield Leagues Club a fortnight ago that saw his appointment rubber stamped, Cleary walked in with a perception of what the club was like.
"The commentary wasn't exactly glowing was it?" he said.
He wanted to know if the club, which had been depicted as a rabble, would provide him with the support and autonomy to carry out the monumental task of transforming the perennial underachievers into a respected and hard-nosed football team.
"He had read an article that suggested we were a basket case with a dysfunctional board that didn't know what we were doing," chairman Marina Go said.
"I'm sure he wanted to meet with me to make sure I wasn't a moron. He must have thought I was after everything that had been written. We allayed those concerns because he decided to sign. I remember Ivan asked us what success looks like. We said to him, 'finals football is what success looks like'.
"Because even though we're increasingly successful off field, which we're proud about, it's almost meaningless if you don't win games of football. He was left under no illusion that we need to get back into the finals football arena sooner rather than later."
The process of appointing Jason Taylor's successor was a three-man race, but the only way Cleary wasn't going to win was if he gave up.
It became a head-hunting exercise trying to nail down the former Warriors and Panthers coach.
"Anyone who knows Ivan Cleary knows that he's really strongly based around values," football manager Kelly Egan said.
"He's got a great perception of leadership and culture and a mentality of evolving the team first. That's what we needed. Most people in the game would agree that he probably should never have been out of a job."
Taylor was given a three-year deal at a time when the club was under all sorts of salary cap pressure with a roster that didn't resemble anything close to a semi-final team.
But he was under no illusion as to how long he had to end the club's finals drought.
"When he joined we were very clear that we were on this three-year journey with him," Go said.
"But in that third year, we wanted to be playing finals."
Three rounds into his third season at the helm, it became clear to the club that vision wasn't going to become a reality.
"We didn't make a mistake appointing JT," Go said. "You take on the right people for the right time. And I still think Jason was the right coach for that time. He wasn't afraid to make difficult decisions that needed to be made. Ivan is now the right coach for a new time."
You can't talk about the demise of Taylor without reflecting on the decision that ultimately cost him his job.
Taylor's legacy at the joint venture will be as the man who ousted club legend Robbie Farah. While he had the backing of the club to send the NSW hooker packing, the way he handled the situation would eventually see the rest of the playing group turn on him.
It wasn't the fact that Farah was gone. Some wanted him to stay. Others were happy to see the back of him.
But the more Taylor dug his heels in and continued his personal vendetta against Farah, the further he dropped in the estimation of the players that mattered.
Those inside the walls at the club's Concord headquarters carried the belief that Taylor's shortcoming was a lack of skills to communicate to the rest of the team. So everything they read, they believed.
It was never handled properly. The club knows that. The now infamous press conference when Taylor declared his intention to drop Farah to NSW Cup if he didn't leave would prove to be the most costly words of his coaching career.
"The worst thing we did as a club was leave him there exposed," Go said of Taylor. "We handled that very poorly. As a club, we had to grow up that day."
While there's an admission of wrongdoing, there's also a very strong belief inside the club that it was in a no-win situation when it came to Farah.
"We had somebody deliberately throwing missiles into the camp," Go said.
"You also have a situation where someone is throwing a bomb, and you can't throw a bomb back because there is no way we would have ever said anything negative about him. Ever. I did an interview saying we will never disrespect him. I know people think we did, but we really didn't.
"Everything we did behind the scenes was to try and make sure he was respected. It became personal. It should never have become personal – because it wasn't personal. Not from our point of view. However, the fact of the matter was we still did need him to leave for a whole bunch of reasons. JT's perception was that he could get more out of the team without him.
"That's not a personal attack on Robbie Farah, that was the coach's view on his ability to coach the team. There's more than just talent and ability – there's a desire to want to do what your coach says."
Chief executive Justin Pascoe walked straight into the eye of the storm when he started at the club 18 months ago, just a few weeks after the Taylor-Farah feud erupted.
Regardless of his own opinions on whether Farah should stay or go, he couldn't begin his tenure by going against the recommendation of the board that had just appointed him.
Much of what he has had to do has been about mending the wrongs of the past, and apart from a $57 million submission for a new centre of excellence, he hasn't been able to leave his imprint on the football department. Until now.
It's all well and good that sponsorship revenue is up a million dollars, membership levels have increased by 66 per cent from last year and the Tigers had the fourth-largest home crowd average.
Ultimately, Pascoe's time as Tigers boss will be deemed a success or failure depending on what happens on the football field under Cleary's watch.
"We will no longer accept mediocrity as the benchmark at this club," Pascoe said.
"We have finally put ourselves in a strong position with an ability to recruit with a freed-up compliant [salary] cap. We'll be able to go out there and add some real value to this roster without previous contractual obligations interfering with that. This change demands resilience and it demands an organisation that is comfortable about being uncomfortable."
That is why Todd Payten was never considered as an option to coach the Wests Tigers. It's why the players were never consulted.
"We didn't want to have a mate as their coach," Go said. "Those young men need a leader. They need discipline."
The Tigers believe they have got what they need in Cleary. But what the players need and want are two different things – evident in the mass turnover in players during Cleary's reign rebuilding the Panthers.
"I'm proud of what I did there," Cleary said.
"I look at that side and look and be proud of the contribution that I made there. That gives me confidence coming to a club like this that I can take them in the right direction. That I can help this club realise its potential."
http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... vfx7s.html
