The modern-era league super coach – who both played for and coached the Warriors – has opened up in his new book about the highs and lows of his career, Not Everything Counts, But Everything Matters.
That includes the highs such as four premiership successes with Penrith and coaching his son and one of the world’s best players, Nathan, and lows such as battling depression, Sonny Fai’s tragic death and his messy exit from the Warriors.
And in a revelation that would make long-suffering Warriors fans shudder, mentor and former All Blacks coach John Hart – who was the Warriors’ executive director of football – says if things were handled better, both Ivan and Nathan Cleary could be at the Warriors.
And in his new book – released in Australia on Wednesday – it was a job he wanted to keep, asking Warriors management in mid-2011 for a contract extension after he was approached about a potential shift to coach the Penrith Panthers.
“The club replied that they wanted to wait before they extended me, which only confirmed my suspicions,” Cleary reveals in the memoir.
“It was my sixth season in charge, and although we’d made the finals consistently, the management – not including John Hart – didn’t think I had what it took to take the club to its maiden title.
“I hadn’t wanted to leave the Warriors, but they didn’t want me. They wanted someone to take them to the next level. It was a business decision, which was their prerogative.”
Former Warriors coach Ivan Cleary (left) with the CEO who presided over his exit from the club, Wayne Scurrah (right). Photo / Photosport
Cleary said he had feared after the 2009 season – where the club was rocked by tragedy and finished 14th – that he was “on borrowed time as head coach of the New Zealand Warriors”.
He felt then club owner Eric Watson and the board wanted a Kiwi coaching the side, with Brian McClennnan the favoured choice.
But it was a decision that started a coaching merry-go-round at the club, with McClennan quitting within a season of his two-year deal.
“John tried his best to convince the Warriors to keep me,” Cleary wrote, “but when he realised that he too wasn’t being supported any longer, he was instrumental in orchestrating an early exit for me so I could join the Panthers for season 2012.”
Hart also writes about Cleary’s exit from the Warriors at the end of the 2011 season in the book’s foreword.
He said the pair had a “close bond” and that he “held him the highest regard”.
Former All Blacks coach and ex-Warriors football director John Hart says Nathan Cleary could be a Warrior if his dad still coached the club. Photo / Photosport
“I thought he could be the Warriors coach for decades to come. He could still be there now,” Hart wrote in the book.
“But he’d asked for a contract extension earlier that year after Penrith came calling, hoping to lure him back. When management wasn’t prepared to give it to him straight away, preferring to wait until the end of the season, the relationship broke down.
“I often wonder how those leading the Warriors look back at 2011. Had they made the right decision and kept Ivan Cleary, he might well still be the club’s head coach today. And who knows? They might have Nathan, his son, as well.”
‘Navigating a tragedy that would rock a club, forever putting things into perspective for me’
Fai – who Cleary described as “a lovely kid with so much potential ... a superstar in the making” - had rushed into the water to save his younger brother and four cousins who had been caught in a rip.
Tragically, he was not to return and 14 years on his body has never been found.
In the book, Cleary writes about his feelings in the aftermath of Fai’s death, the impact it had on his teammates, and what it was like “navigating a tragedy that would rock a club, forever putting things into perspective for me”.
Sonny Fai was regarded as a superstar in the making. Photo / Photosport
Fai – who was aged just 20 – went missing the day before the Warriors were to return to pre-season training after the side’s Christmas break.
It was Cleary who had the job of revealing the heartbreaking news to the playing group.
“I can still see Simon Mannering’s face,” he wrote.
“His expression went from happy as Larry to absolute shock and sadness in an instant. It was horrendous.
“Instead of training, we got on a bus and drove 40 minutes to the beach and the whole team walked along the shoreline, looking for Sonny. Devastatingly, his body would never be found.”
Cleary wrote how the death “shattered the Warriors community”.
A rescue boat with the help of a helicopter spotlight searches for Sonny Fai hours after he went missing. Photo / Dean Purcell
Younger members of the squad were among Fai’s best friends.
Cleary opens up on his battle with depression – struggled to get out of bed at the Warriors
From the outside, Cleary has exuded a calmness about him throughout his head coaching career; including his early days as Warriors coach.
But in the book, Cleary revealed the battles he has faced with depression and at times self-doubt.
He said he first “encountered depression” in 2009 during his fourth season coaching the Warriors.
“I couldn’t get out of bed, at times, and I’d cry for no reason,” he wrote.
“That would only ever happen around Bec [Cleary’s wife], who was perfect as always in helping me through it. As I say, at the time I didn’t know it was depression. I just knew I was feeling pretty s****. It was an unexplained vulnerability.”
Ivan Cleary has revealed that behind his calm exterior, he has battled depression and self-doubt. Photo / Photosport
The year had been a tough one at the club; first, there was Fai’s tragic death, then poor results saw them finish well down the points ladder.
“I am looking at the box of antidepressants in my hand, wondering if I should take them or not.
“’S***’, I say to myself, ‘I can’t take much more’.
“It’s May 2019. I’ve seen my doctor and explained how the world is closing in on me. It has become too much. I feel overwhelmed and I need help.
Ivan Cleary says he first suffered depression during the 2009 NRL while at the Warriors. Photo / NZME
“Coaches aren’t supposed to be vulnerable. They’re supposed to carry the load of the entire club.
“I know people look at me and think I’m calm, even laid-back. But what you see on the outside doesn’t reflect what’s happening on the inside.”
The stresses included a succession of losses on his return to Penrith, unhappiness with sections of the culture of the club he had returned to and claims of nepotism around how he treated Nathan.
He also contemplated quitting Penrith, a club he has gone on to coach to victories in the past four NRL grand finals.
“In the end, I don’t quit and I don’t take the antidepressants,” he wrote.
“For a coach, the best medication is success. We beat Parramatta in round 11, then win our next six games, eventually finishing the season one win outside the top eight.”
Ending his playing days at the Warriors – lack of pain about grand final loss
Cleary’s final game as a player in the NRL also doubled with the first time the Warriors made the NRL final.
Despite high expectations from fans after they had claimed the minor premiership, they were well-beaten 30-8 in the final by the Sydney Roosters.
Cleary was to taste further NRL final defeat with the club in 2011 as head coach.
And he revealed in his book that defeat as a player in 2002 didn’t hurt as much as it should have.
Ivan Cleary (left) and John Hart (right) have a strong bond and respect for each other. Photo / NZME
“Losing the grand final hurt, but it didn’t hurt like it did when I was coach. I’m not sure why,” he said.
“I was actually happy for the Roosters players and staff – many were friends of mine from when I was at the club between 1996 and 1999.
“When I reflect on that grand final, though, it doesn’t given me a good feeling. It’s not like I didn’t try. I prepared well and desperately wanted to be part of the Warriors’ maiden premiership, but it just didn’t mean enough to me – and it should have.
“I wasn’t prepared to risk enough to win. If I was fair dinkum about winning, that grand final loss should have hurt more than it did, because it was my first and only grand final in 11 seasons of first grade.”
In a chapter titled Owning Your Mistakes, Cleary also writes about the pros and cons of coaches playing “mind games” with their players.
Ivan Cleary is tackled during the 2002 NRL grand final. Photo / Photosport
That included recalling how at the end of the 2001 season, then Warriors coach Daniel Anderson told him during a year-ending review: “You’ll struggle to make it next year”.
“This might have been true or he might have been needling me,” Cleary wrote.
“Whatever the case, it pissed me off – to the point that it became fuel for me. It drove me to make my final season one of the best of my career ... mind games can work.”
Unlocking the Warriors and getting the best of Pasifika players
Sydney-born Cleary writes how he first “came to understand the importance of different cultures” when he joined the Warriors in 2000.
He said it was a far different environment to those he had experienced playing at Manly, North Sydney and the Roosters.
“In those environments, you had to be thick-skinned or you didn’t survive,” he wrote.
“If you played poorly, you were crucified, and the general banter among the players could be quite brutal.”
Talk within the Warriors camp was “much more sensitive” he wrote.
Ivan Cleary says he loved working with Pasifika players at the Warriors and doing all he could to unlock their potential. Photo / Dean Purcell
What he experienced as a player in such a multicultural set-up – which he said was a “true melting pot of cultures” - helped him when he became Warriors head coach for the 2006 NRL.
“As a coach, learned to be sensitive to the cultural backgrounds of Pasifika players,” he wrote in the book published by HarperCollins.
“That’s not to say they can’t thrive being spoken to in a tough, old-school way. But they’re going to be better players if you make the effort to understand how they see the world and interact with one another.”
Cleary also said how “the general belief” in Australia when he took charge of the Warriors was that the side was “skilful but lazy – that they lacked heart”.
He wrote how one of his priorities was to stop people saying the players only dug in for 60 minutes of the match.
“It was a damaging stereotype of Pasifika players, and wrong in so many ways. Clumping all Pasifika players together into one group and setting expectations for them on the basis of shallow stereotypes was unfair, and a huge source of frustration for us.
“But many in the rugby league world did that that way back then. It was silly and ignorant.”
Ivan Cleary says second rower Micheal Luck was one of the most reliable players he coached at the Warriors. Photo / Photosport
Cleary highlighted also two players who helped create a strong culture and work ethic during his coaching stint; former captain Simon Mannering and Australian import Micheal Luck.
He wrote that Luck “wasn’t big or fast, and he wasn’t overly skilful, but he kept going in all situations regardless of external factors. He was tough as hell, and very coachable”.
“He and Simon Mannering were the pillars of the Warriors sides I coached back then,” he wrote in Not Everything Counts, But Everything Matters.
“They led the club away from its reputation as flashy and soft, setting in place a culture in which consistency, hardness and durability were valued.”
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 30 years of newsroom experience.
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