Phil Moss would sit in his office at the Parramatta Eels, pondering why the club that should have been his biggest threat, the Penrith Panthers, just couldn’t get it right.
Now, the man who spent 21 years in various positions at the Eels, is one of the key men responsible for turning around Penrith’s fortunes and making it the club he always envisioned it should be.
Sitting high up in his stunning office overlooking Penrith Stadium, Moss is essentially Phil Gould’s right hand and most-trusted man.
Speaking exclusively with Extra Time, Moss said his role deals with the day-to-day aspects of the club, leaving Gould to take care of the “special projects”.
“Gus focuses more on the special projects like dealing with councils, local Governments and recruitment,” he said.
“While Gus still is involved in some of the day-to-day things, he pretty much leaves it for me to run.”
Coming up to his two-year anniversary at the Panthers, Moss joined the club at the very beginning of its biggest restructure and overhaul in its 45 year history.
It’s been widely reported that before Gould and Moss took over, the Panthers club was in financial turmoil and on the field were a team in decline.
Moss said he didn’t feel comfortable criticising the club’s previous regime.
“Gus has said quite a few times about the financial position the club was in but I’m not going to criticise anybody because I didn’t know any of the people running the footy side of things at that time,” he said.
“For me I’ve been brought here to do a job and I think we’re well on the way to getting that done.
“The place didn’t gel before – the Leagues Club didn’t talk with the footy club, that type of thing. But with thanks to Sue McNeill (Panthers’ Chief Operating Officer) we brought the whole thing back together and are part of one team now. It’s no longer an us versus them scenario.”
But restoring the harmony in the club isn’t the only thing Moss has played a part in. Last year he was instrumental in luring major sponsors OAK and Asics to the club.
“I was very happy about bringing on a company like OAK as our major sponsor, Asics as well,” Moss said.
“The other part I’m happy about is the way the footy club functions now, it’s a fun place to be at and that’s how I like it. I like people coming into work enjoying themselves and I think you get the best out of people when it’s like that. We’re pretty laid back, it’s an open door policy, I’m not one of those blokes who keeps the door shut.”
But as the club continues to grow and prosper, there will always be challenges and tough decisions to make along the way.
Recently, one of those tough decisions was telling captain Kevin Kingston he was free to look for another club next year.
“Kevin was never told we don’t want him here, out of respect for Kevin and the person that he is, we said that if he wanted to have a look around and see what else is out there, he is most welcome to do that, and then we’ll see where that takes us,” Moss said.
“I knew Kevin from his Parramatta days and he’s a quality guy, and out of respect for him we’ve let him test the market and then we can talk after that.”
Another challenge for Moss and Panthers is dealing with low membership and crowd numbers as well as the continued threat of the GWS Giants and Western Sydney Wanderers.
“I think team performance is always going to affect crowd numbers,” Moss said.
“We’ve had a couple of good wins of late, so they’ll soon be coming back. We’ve also changed a few things at the stadium which has taken some time for people to adapt to but I think we’ll get there eventually.
“In terms of the other codes, you’d be silly if you said you don’t worry about them but we can only control what we can control. They’ve obviously got their plans in mind and we’ve got ours.”
Another hot topic always on the agenda of every NRL club is the salary cap.
Moss is the man in charge of Penrith’s salary cap – a complex beast in which he enjoys controlling.
“It’s interesting, I actually quite enjoy it,” he revealed.
“It’s a complex spreadsheet that you work with and you’ve got to be on the ball with what you’re doing and how you construct your contracts.
“It’s not just worrying about 2013, you’ve got worry about how that’s going to affect you in 2014, ‘15 and ‘16. It takes some work to keep it under control.
“You’ve just got to be very mindful about how you go about constructing your contracts and you don’t leave yourself with any little surprises.”
Such little surprises were amongst the problems that existed in the past and led to back-ended deals with players that put huge financial pressure on the club.
Many will admit, including Moss, that Penrith still has a long way to go to becoming the best NRL club in Australia – something they hope to be over the next decade.
But with a couple of season defining wins already on the board plus some excellent new recruits to don the famous black jersey next season, Moss isn’t surprised that players from other clubs are keen to find out what the Panthers are about.
“Penrith was never a club linked to anybody and now all of a sudden it seems everyone wants to come here,” he said.
“We’ll take it as a compliment, we must be doing something right if everyone wants to come here now.”
With stars like Jamie Soward, Elijah Taylor and Brent Kite already on Penrith’s books for next season, the focus now is seeing who else Penrith can add to the mix as well as which off-contract players should they keep on for another year or more.
“We have a recruitment and retention plan and we’ll just keep plotting away with that but we’re pretty happy with how the roster is shaping up for 2014,” Moss said.
“We’ve just got to make sure we get it right.
“Our focus is to make sure we develop our juniors into first graders and then it’s up to the right coaching and the right development, and hopefully they’ll want to stay here and be Panthers.”
