Cleary Snr is the first coach since Gibson to take a club side to three straight premierships and in the fair dinkum department you’ll be hard pressed finding anyone who thinks the Panthers aren’t going to qualify for a FIFTH straight grand final.
Five grand finals in five seasons is a phenomenal achievement in any era. Even more so in a salary cap era.
If the Panthers can make it four straight premierships you won’t catch Cleary celebrating in a fur coat or with a famous one-liner that’ll be forever etched in rugby league folklore.
Only three years ago Cleary was drawing comparisons to Brian Smith because he’d coached 367 NRL games without being able to win a grand final.
That was after Wayne Bennett’s South Sydney Rabbitohs had upset the Panthers in week one of the 2021 finals series to put Penrith on tilt.
Cleary and the Panthers then recovered to do it the hard way during one of the great finals runs by beating Parramatta (8-6), Melbourne (10-6) and finally South Sydney (14-12) in the grand final to win the club’s first title since 2003.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead.
The late, great Jack Gibson used the famous one-liner back in 1981 the year the Parramatta Eels finally smashed a 34-season premiership drought.
Gibson went on to win three straight Winfield Cups with an Eels side comprising champion players Ray Price, Brett Kenny, Peter Sterling, Mick Cronin and Eric Grothe Snr.
Back then Big Jack was just as big of a figure as any of the star players who helped propel the Eels to titles in 1981, 1982 and 1983.
Bring it forward to today and the question has to be asked where does Ivan Cleary sit in terms of the all-time great coaches of rugby league.
