The Latest in Coaching Musical Chairs - NRL Style...

[Apey]

The story from a Tigers insider who has a proven track record of being correct:

* Barrett had the Panthers job verbally agreed, but needed to get out of his Manly contract, so he resigned

* Ivan went to Panthers and said he wanted to coach Nathan. Either the Panthers took him back or he was bringing Nathan to Wests in 2020

* Penrith decided on The Clearys and agreed to have him from 2021. Ivan was the one who wanted to come earlier

My gripe has always been with Ivan, he was the one who acted unethically. Not Gould or the Panthers

but everyone on LU and twitter told me it was Gus's fault?

 

[Valheru]

Does seem a great way to get around the cap, pay the coach $1.5mill a year, with the coach then bunging his son $500k a year of it to stay! Not suggesting for a minute this is the case but could if so chosen.

Yeah but you could do that with any coach/player, you don't have to be related.

 

[JB04]

The thing I don’t understand is this, if the tigers have upgraded there coach as per Pascoe and tiger supporters why are they all over Twitter and LU rubbishining ivan and why is Pascoe in the media taking potshots at Ivan
I mean you’re happy with macguire how about moving on

I’m one of the ones who is very over it. What’s happened has happened and I have been very proud of how my club handled the situation and the outcome that has eventuated. All that shit is in the past now, Panthers are happy, Tigers are happy, IC is happy and Madge is happy. End of story.

 

[Perth Red]

Yeah but you could do that with any coach/player, you don't have to be related.

True but its easier if in family to squirrel away into a trust fund or something you'd think. I remember going to Perpignan and chortled at the number of female "sales staff" in the Dragons merch caravan who all had Australian accents. It was extremely well staffed and I'm sure they were all very well paid sales chicks!

 

[Abacus]

You have completely missed the point, but let me help you see it using your own examples:

- Tim Sheens - Sacked due to poor performance (in the opinion of the board) before his contract was finished. HE WAS PAID IN TOTAL the remainder or his contract value so contract was met. Now stay with me here, here is the tricky bit........Tim Sheens was replaced by Mick Potter, who was not under contract to anyone else and was not induced to break a binding contract.

Mick Potter - Served out his contract. Not sacked. Not renewed. He was told during the season which is effectively months notice. Not sure what else Tigers were supposed to do. How many coaches actually get to the end of there contract these days? OK, now here is something you may recognise from earlier.....Mick Potter was replaced by Jason Taylor (unforunately) , who was not under contract to anyone else and was not induced to break a binding contract.

- Jason Taylor - Sacked due to poor performance before his contract was finished (in his final year). Unfortunately Faalogo was unavailable to break the news to him. HE WAS PAID IN TOTAL the remainder or his contract value so contract was met. What happened next?.......Jason Taylor was replaced by Ivan Cleary, who was not under contract to anyone else and was not induced to break a binding contract.

The Tigers have been put in an unfortunate situation again where they need to replace a coach and where did they look? They employed someone who was not under contract to anyone else. By all reports Maguire was the Tigers second choice, because the guy that they wanted was still under contract to another club and the Tigers wouldnt try to induce him to break his contract with someone else.

Are you beginning to see the point? You seem to be trying to use examples of Tigers sacking two coaches as justification for the Panthers behaviour. I spent most of my adult lifetime writing Contracts. A contract is an agreement between TWO parties. it is agreement that they will each do something in consideration for the other (work and get paid). If and when one of those parties can not carry out their side of the agreement, its called frustration and both sides of the contract still have to play their part which is why in the two cases at the Tigers, Sheens & Taylor got paid out.

In the case of the Panthers, its a THIRD party frustrating the Contract. Pretty clear to me.

Not sure why it is relevant whether the club paid the contract in full? This would likely be covered by any contractual termination provisions. The issue I was referring to is job security for the individual.

Cleary signed agreed to coach Panthers following his current agreement with the Tigers i.e the period from when he is uncontracted. A contract specialist such as yourself is surely able to identify this delineation? There was no promise of Cleary being further employed by the Tigers so he can sign with whatever employer he likes from that time.

Not sure why Panthers need to give a f**k what one of their competitors think? They need to secure the resources they need to compete witg Storm, Roosters, Rabbits, Sharks, etc. No different to any other corporate environment.

 

[OldPanther]

But he has already shown that he will put Nathan's career ahead of what is good for the Tigers.

Tigers need a long term stable coach, Ivan said he was this, he brought players to the club that wanted to play for him, some even moved countries to do so. Only for this grub to dog them 12 months later with the assistance of the Panthers.

The best part about this mess is that the Panthers will be paying for 3 coaches next year with arguably the worst coach of the 3 coaching them.

I never said that everything was fine from a Tigers perspective. It's absolutely a stuff around as far as long term planning is concerned. Maybe I'm naive but I think it can be done.

 

[Springs09]

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me what the Panthers (or anyone else for that matter) see in Cleary as a coach besides the fact he has a mildly talented son they want to keep at the club?

Isn't his record something like 1 finals appearance in the last 7 seasons? Even his GF run in 2011 was a fluke on the back of benefiting from a flawed finals system (6th place making a GF after losing by 30 week one).

I can't see this being anything other than a spectacular failure for the Panthers.

Tigers on the other have come up well in front procuring someone who has actually been a success as a coach.

He's been able to turn poor teams into alright teams 3 times, but that's about it. He also left 2 of those teams to go to the Panthers.

The Warriors were a competitive side when he was there but they could never go that extra step, they were like the current Panthers side. 2011 GF was lucky and the Warriors had overall better years previous.

Reached one prelim with the Panthers and had 2 other poor years, which is the equivalent of Bennett at the Knights.

Took the Tigers from near the bottom to near the eight.

Don't know why he seems to be considered on the level of coaches like Robinson or McGuire who took poor performing teams to premierships. Or why the players voted him 2nd best coach in the league.

 

[unforgiven]

The thing I don’t understand is this, if the tigers have upgraded there coach as per Pascoe and tiger supporters why are they all over Twitter and LU rubbishining ivan and why is Pascoe in the media taking potshots at Ivan
I mean you’re happy with macguire how about moving on

Because he has shown him self to be a man of little integrity.

 

[unforgiven]

He's been able to turn poor teams into alright teams 3 times, but that's about it. He also left 2 of those teams to go to the Panthers.

The Warriors were a competitive side when he was there but they could never go that extra step, they were like the current Panthers side. 2011 GF was lucky and the Warriors had overall better years previous.

Reached one prelim with the Panthers and had 2 other poor years, which is the equivalent of Bennett at the Knights.

Took the Tigers from near the bottom to near the eight.

Don't know why he seems to be considered on the level of coaches like Robinson or McGuire who took poor performing teams to premierships. Or why the players voted him 2nd best coach in the league.

Players in the past have seemed to like him and want to play for him, this can be seen in the number of previous players that linked up with him at the Tigers, after this I think he may have blown that.

 

[Abacus]

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me what the Panthers (or anyone else for that matter) see in Cleary as a coach besides the fact he has a mildly talented son they want to keep at the club?

Isn't his record something like 1 finals appearance in the last 7 seasons? Even his GF run in 2011 was a fluke on the back of benefiting from a flawed finals system (6th place making a GF after losing by 30 week one).

I can't see this being anything other than a spectacular failure for the Panthers.

Tigers on the other have come up well in front procuring someone who has actually been a success as a coach.

You could be right in which case why are the Tigers still bitching?

 

[unforgiven]

The thing I don’t understand is this, if the tigers have upgraded there coach as per Pascoe and tiger supporters why are they all over Twitter and LU rubbishining ivan and why is Pascoe in the media taking potshots at Ivan
I mean you’re happy with macguire how about moving on

It has a lot to do with how he came into the club, the way he spoke and dealt with the "big 4" filled Tigers fans with hope that he was truly committed to turning this team around and that he had the integrity and skills to back up his big talk with action.

What Tigers fans are disappointed in is the fact that he turned out to be a false prophet and all his big talk about either being on the bus or off the bus was just bs and all that he cared about was babysitting his son and he didn't care what damage he did to our club to achieve that.

 

[OldPanther]

Not sure why it is relevant whether the club paid the contract in full? This would likely be covered by any contractual termination provisions. The issue I was referring to is job security for the individual.

Cleary signed agreed to coach Panthers following his current agreement with the Tigers i.e the period from when he is uncontracted. A contract specialist such as yourself is surely able to identify this delineation? There was no promise of Cleary being further employed by the Tigers so he can sign with whatever employer he likes from that time.

Not sure why Panthers need to give a f**k what one of their competitors think? They need to secure the resources they need to compete witg Storm, Roosters, Rabbits, Sharks, etc. No different to any other corporate environment.

This. Having that kind of job security is normally unheard of for NRL coaches. He'd be a fool to turn it down.

 

[unforgiven]

Not sure why it is relevant whether the club paid the contract in full? This would likely be covered by any contractual termination provisions. The issue I was referring to is job security for the individual.

Cleary signed agreed to coach Panthers following his current agreement with the Tigers i.e the period from when he is uncontracted. A contract specialist such as yourself is surely able to identify this delineation? There was no promise of Cleary being further employed by the Tigers so he can sign with whatever employer he likes from that time.

Not sure why Panthers need to give a f**k what one of their competitors think? They need to secure the resources they need to compete witg Storm, Roosters, Rabbits, Sharks, etc. No different to any other corporate environment.

The obligation of the club in these contracts is to pay for the services that they have requested from the coach, if they no longer want those services than they still have to pay the coach as the Tigers have done. Albeit with some push and shove with Sheens, which i feel the Tigers were in the wrong.

See that, I;'m able to criticize the team I support when they do something I think is wrong.

 

[unforgiven]

This. Having that kind of job security is normally unheard of for NRL coaches. He'd be a fool to turn it down.

He had security for the length of the contract he signed, did he request an extension with the Tigers? or did he just put them in an unmanageable position hoping they would release him so he could go breastfeed Nathan?

 

[OldPanther]

He had security for the length of the contract he signed, did he request an extension with the Tigers? or did he just put them in an unmanageable position hoping they would release him so he could go breastfeed Nathan?

None of us can answer that without knowing what actually happened behind closed doors. From the info that we do have he was getting a contract for 3 years as of 2021. That's the job security I'm referring to. I don't agree that makes thing untenable with the Tigers but it makes perfect sense why people disagree with me on that.

 

[big hit!]

Nathan still had a year to go just like Ivan had 2 and could legally negotiate from November 1st. Ivan could negotiate his next contract whenever he wanted. If it's so terrible the NRL should change the rules so coaches Can't negotiate until a set date like players.

does there really need to be a rule for this for coaches?

how about Ivan Cleary man up and be professional. how can anyone who works for this bloke place any faith in what he says. no substance.

 

[PANTHERMIKE]

By that logic, Brad Arthur should be regarded in that class as Smith was playing fullback in the 2017 finals series

He took the Eels to the finals, with Mitchell Moses.

He should have been coach of the year and retired.

 

[unforgiven]

None of us can answer that without knowing what actually happened behind closed doors. From the info that we do have he was getting a contract for 3 years as of 2021. That's the job security I'm referring to. I don't agree that makes thing untenable with the Tigers but it makes perfect sense why people disagree with me on that.

So on the day Gould sacked Griffen, who was the coach he said he had in mind to be the Panthers coach?

 

[The Rosco]

This. Having that kind of job security is normally unheard of for NRL coaches. He'd be a fool to turn it down.

But how is all this job security going to cope if he starts to look tired ?
If IC was a miserable arrogant SOB who's mantra was " I'm just here to do a job. No guarantees, no promises. I'll coach and youse can GFY". then I'm sure we'd all be OK with the way things turned out.
It's the bullshit " nice guy" persona that IC trotted out that makes what he did wrong.
IC isn't a premiership winning coach. He's not even a great coach. His biggest asset was his image based on integrity and honesty. He can coach and as a refreshing change, appeared to hold a set of morals.
His biggest asset now is . . . . well, I guess it's his bank account.
The merkin in me wants to see it all come unstuck. Coaching your son in u/21s is hard enough . . . it has the potential to implode at NRL level.
I await the riff fans comments then . . .

 

[OldPanther]

So on the day Gould sacked Griffen, who was the coach he said he had in mind to be the Panthers coach?

From what I know Gus wanted Ciraldo and the board wanted Ivan for 2021 which he reciprocated and pushed for 2019 apparently and seems accurate judging from what's happened. Tigers stood their ground(good on them) and Panthers offered him the original 2021 contract. Next thing Ivan has been released and Madge is hired with a payment of $200k from Ivan to the Tigers.