When building a champion team, you need at least three things: a good coach, good players and good management. From the architects themselves, this is how Penrith achieved what many clubs before them have failed to do…
Trust the process
Sporting clubs all over the world achieve success in many different ways. Some like to spend money buying talent for a quick fix, while others put their funds towards development for longer lasting success.
What works for some clubs, may not for others.
In the case of the Penrith Panthers, they are all about the process or the system, which many would say has been the biggest key to their golden run over the past five seasons.
Penrith Panthers CEO Matt Cameron, a former school teacher and NRL assistant coach, remembers like it was yesterday the development pathway he put in place when he arrived more than a decade ago.
The vision, ‘Project 2015’, was designed to future-proof the club for long-term success.
“The single biggest thing about ‘Project 2015’ was alignment and that was talking to Ivan [Cleary] and understanding what he looks for in a player and aligning our recruitment strategies with what the head coach was looking for; aligning our developing programs with what the head coach was looking for,” Cameron told the Weekender.
“A great example is Lindsay Smith. We had a program called Junior Elite Training School (JETS) and Lindsay was our youngest JET at 14-years-old.
“Now, if the program is lined up the way it should be, a player like Lindsay should progress all the way through to first grade.
“If everyone knows what we’re looking for and we all agree to it and we all stick to it, then we should produce good people and good players.”
This strategy didn’t just work with Smith – who will play in his second NRL Grand Final this weekend – but dozens of players that have worn the Panthers jersey.
And while Cameron is the person many people point to for the current state of the club, he knows that it takes a team of good, intelligent and hardworking people to build a dynasty.
“Everyone thinks this is an overnight success. It’s taken us 10 years and a hell of a lot of people and a hell of a long time to get the club to where it is now,” Cameron said.
“People often just see the footy team out there, but they don’t see the layers upon layers involved in building a successful business because that’s what we are, a business.
“I say to people all the time, our business is no different to your business. It’s just when we get it right, we’re on the back page of the paper and sometimes when we mess it up, we’re on the front page of the paper.
“But it’s a business like everyone’s else’s business and it starts at the top with good governance, good management, good people and then collectively being aligned with what we want to achieve.”
No club in the NRL era has achieved what Penrith has over the past five years, and while Cameron knows that Premierships won’t always come every year, if you’re patient and stick to the process, sustained success will.
“If you talk to Ivan, we don’t talk about winning. We talk about the process. We are a process-driven team, club, business – however you look at it,” Cameron said.
“The reality is, 16 teams won’t win a Grand Final every year and the success our club has had over the past five years has been absolutely phenomenal, it’s like rarefied air. But we’re not silly enough to think we can do it for 10 seasons in-a-row.
“The challenge is to be a really consistent, process-driven business that achieves good results every year, to put ourselves in the window of playing Grand Finals every year.”
“We copped a few knocks, but everyone stuck together” – Jim Jones
Success doesn’t happen overnight and in the case of the Penrith Panthers, it’s taken the better part of a decade to get to where they are today.
Jim Jones has been Recruitment Manager at the Panthers since the early 1990s and has been responsible for scouting some of the game’s biggest names over that period.
In fact, more than a dozen players in Penrith’s current Grand Final team were identified as teenage prospects by the soon-to-be 70-year-old.
Take Liam Martin for instance, a tough kid from country NSW who has gone on to win multiple premierships as well as represent his state and country.
“Marto came down to do work experience. I remember Royce Simmons’ brother rang me and said, ‘I’ve got a young bloke who wants to come down and do a bit of work experience’,” Jones told the Weekender.
“So, he came over, I showed him around, gave him a bit of gear and I said, ‘Do you want to have a run?’. He said, ‘Yeah’, and he went out and busted a few.”
Stories like Martin’s journey to the Panthers is just one of many that Jones has in his repertoire, and he’s proud to share them.
“You can get these kids into the system, but it’s up to them to do the work and train and play and take the knocks and injuries,” Jones said.
“You can identify them and give them the opportunity, but they’re the ones that do it.”
While Jones is largely responsible for plucking these teens from footy clubs from all over the state and country, it takes a whole army of people to develop them into first graders.
“It’s a credit to the club and the system. Matty Cameron and the whole Board, the staff over at the Academy, Gus who was the architect of building the Academy, plus you can’t underestimate Ivan Cleary and the coaching side of things,” Jones said.
“Ivan’s proven to be one of the best coaches in the game and the players respect him and play for him. It was a great move to get him back.”
But none of what you see now at the Panthers happened without a solid plan and plenty of blood, sweat and tears. Jones recalled a meeting some 10 years ago that outlined Penrith’s vision for the future.
“We had a long-term plan. Matt Cameron sat us down and said, ‘Right, we’re going to work hard with the Junior League and work hard with Western Division’ and that’s how we got players like Yeoy (Isaah Yeo), Liam Martin, Matty Burton and Charlie Staines,” he said.
“We were patient. We stuck through the hard times, and I think the reward now is seeing what we’ve done over the past five or six years.
“Other clubs aren’t as patient, and they sack everyone and start again. They think that fixes everything. But we pick and stick here at Penrith, we pick and stick. Loyalty is a big magic word. I’ve showed loyalty to the club, and they’ve shown it to me.”
The $5 coffee that changed everything
Former Penrith Panthers Chairman Dave O’Neill has fond memories of his near decade involved with the club, but there’s one moment that will stay with him forever. One moment that changed the course of not only the Panthers, but the rugby league world as we know it.
The year was 2018 and Penrith had just sacked their coach Anthony Griffin mere weeks out from the NRL Finals. It was a shock decision, especially considering the Panthers were sitting fourth at the time.
With rumours swirling as to who would be Penrith’s next head coach, O’Neill wondered to himself if an old flame could be the one to reignite the Panthers into the next generation.
“I was involved with Ivan when he first came to the club in 2012, so I knew he had a passion for that side,” O’Neill told the Weekender.
“I struck up a friendship with him and I knew he ‘got’ what Penrith was about. Penrith is a small community and has a big nursery, but you’ve got to understand those cultures in there – especially the diverse culture around the Penrith area.
“Obviously, it didn’t work out with ‘Hook’ (Anthony Griffin). I thought he was a good guy, but he had different ideas to us. We had one shot at getting Ivan back.”
In 2018, Ivan Cleary was enjoying his second season in charge of the Wests Tigers.
But with media reports suggesting his son Nathan was on the radar of the Concord-based club, O’Neill knew he had to reconnect with his old mate before it was too late.
“I knew Ivan was always uncomfortable coaching against Nathan and everyone thought he’d eventually go and play for the Wests Tigers,” O’Neill said.
“The night before I caught up with him, I thought to myself… ‘what if I asked him to coach Penrith again?’. At the time, we had an interim coach in Cameron Ciraldo.
“So we sat around and had a coffee, and we didn’t even speak about Nathan. We were talking about other things and then the next minute I was asking if he’d come back. He said ‘yeah’, and the rest is history, really.”
Cleary returning to Penrith was a massive and complicated process, with numerous parties needing to sign off on the deal.
“I had to bring that to the CEO and Gus and then to the Board, who were unanimous that Ivan was the man,” O’Neill said
“Then it was up to Brian [Fletcher] to finalise the deal with Ivan’s management. It was a big process and a tough time at the Panthers. But a $5 coffee and the rest is history.”
When Cleary returned in 2019, not everything went to plan. The side struggled in his comeback year and Cleary would later admit he’d almost given coaching away due to the stress of that season.
O’Neill, too, was struggling but not once did he or anyone at the Panthers for that matter waver, that Cleary was the right man for the job.
“The first year he came back, it was a tough time. I know I had plenty of sleepless nights over it,” O’Neill admitted.
“Even though we had a lot of tough times in 2019, there was never any discussion whether we made a bad decision in getting Ivan back. Ivan was the person, the man.”
Like the old saying goes, ‘tough times don’t last, tough people do’ and Penrith would eventually come out the other side in a huge way.
In 2020, a year after Cleary’s return, the Panthers would play in their first NRL Grand Final in 17 years before eventually taking out the Premiership in 2021.
Four months later, in February 2022, O’Neill would depart the Panthers after falling short of being re-elected to the Board.
Despite not being involved with the club in a professional capacity, O’Neill will always be credited for being one of the pivotal architects of Building the Champions.
“Ivan and I are still good friends, and we catch up every now and then, but I let him do what he does and I’m just a proud fan,” O’Neill said ahead of Penrith’s fifth consecutive decider.
“The current Board are doing an amazing job, and the current management have taken the club to the next level.
“I had good times there, but my time is up, and I’ve moved on. I’m so proud to see Penrith be Penrith. There’s no reason why this dynasty will end on Sunday. It’s got plenty of momentum going forward.”
Nathan Taylor
Nathan Taylor is the Weekender's Deputy Editor and Senior Sports Writer. He also compiles the weekly Chatter on the Box TV column. Nathan is an award-winning journalist, who has worked at the Weekender for a decade.