By D.R. Lennox
“The lows are so painful that they make the highs so incredibly high, and that’s the opposite of what my personality is. I’m like a pretty level person, and yet I’m attracted to this thing called coaching that takes me to these ups and downs.”
Although he didn’t grow up in or around rugby league – his dad was a Balmain Tigers fan; he and his two older brothers dabbled in all sports – Ivan Cleary has become a mainstay of the NRL. After making his first‑grade debut in 1992 and playing for several clubs, he retired from the game in 2002, making the ostensibly seamless transition to coaching and guiding the Sydney Roosters to the 2004 reserve grade premiership.
Having simply followed his brothers into rugby league, as he would have us believe, coaching didn’t come so easily to Cleary. Although he had mentors like Ricky Stuart, he felt it took him some time to find his feet and his “authentic” self. “It was a real light bulb moment when I started coaching at the Roosters; Ricky Stuart was the first‑grade coach and, in short, Ricky and I are pretty much opposites in terms of style – we were then anyway. I was learning under him and I’d watch him and go, ‘I need to do it this sort of way’,” he recalls.
“But at the end of my first season I was like, ‘I’m not being authentic’. There was a culture around what you thought the coach should say, and Ricky was fairly emotional; he was hard on the guys but he was great to learn off. I learnt so much in that time but I also felt I was trying to communicate too much like what he did, and it wasn’t really the true me. It was good to go through that and actually learn for myself.”
Today, it’s a different story. “Figuratively, I now sit in the helicopter and look down, which is great, but it takes a while to be able to do that. It takes a while to be able to say nothing sometimes. They’ve got to make mistakes to learn too,” he says of his players. “The game’s much more specialised, much more professional; I was around when professionalism started in the mid ‘90s and from that point to now it’s just come so far. People talk about the good old days but honestly, if you put two pieces of film side by side, today and back then, you’d just go ‘oh, god!’ The big guys are fitter and faster and more agile but they’re still strong, they’re still big, but they’re different big.”
“I talk to my wife, she’s a great sounding board. She’s my soulmate and I can honestly say that.”
Now into his second year of a five‑year coaching contract with Penrith, a team that includes his son, Nathan, Cleary is set to move on from a season with which he was “not happy” and make 2020 a good year. “What they’re doing [players, coaching squad] is a reflection of what I’ve done, so if they’re not doing it right that’s my fault,” he says, admitting that each game is an “incredible emotional journey”, no matter how many you’ve coached. “There’s nowhere between a win and a loss: there’s not many good losses; there’s a few bad wins but a bad win still makes you feel good. The lows are so painful that they make the highs so incredibly high, and that’s the opposite of what my personality is. I’m like a pretty level person, and yet I’m attracted to this thing called coaching that takes me to these ups and downs.”
Cleary already anticipates there will be more ups than downs in 2020, based on the team’s first phase of off‑season training. But before the off‑season training began for 2020, Cleary had a month off, and returned to one of his first loves: the surf. “I like to go to the beach, that’s what I like to do. I don’t get the chance as much anymore; I like to surf as much as I can. I’ve actually moved back to the northern beaches, where I grew up. I spent the last eight years out at Penrith, and have gone back to the beaches, literally, in this month I’ve had off.”
That month off not only recharges the batteries for Cleary but reboots his footy brain. “You have a month off but what you do is you invigorate your creative juices. I love that time because you come up with new ideas. I talk to my wife, she’s a great sounding board. She’s my soulmate and I can honestly say that; almost 25 years straight of marriage and still going strong.”
Happy wife, happy coaching life? Either way, Ivan Cleary appears to be kicking goals – or orchestrating tries – on and off the field.
