How Craig Fitzgibbon, Billy Slater and the late Paul Green moulded the NRL’s latest head coach

“Winning was in his DNA. He lived in the now, but never took his eye off the big picture.

“A perfect example of that was the middle of 2017 when we met for coffee one morning in Canberra. We had to win against the Raiders to stay in touch with the finals.

“We had already lost Johnathan Thurston and Matt Scott, and I said to Greeny, ‘this is going to be a bloody tough game to win’.

“He turned to me and said, ‘we need to come up with a game plan capable of beating Melbourne’. Melbourne were streets ahead of the competition at that stage.

“I was talking about the Raiders. He knew we had to win, but was always thinking ahead, thinking of ways to beat the beat to be the best. That was the way he was programmed. He had that ultimate belief.”

Hannay spent the past five years working under Fitzgibbon at the Sharks, and when the job came up at the Titans, he was initially reluctant because there was a sense of ‘unfinished business’ in the Shire.

Cronulla had made the finals four years in a row, and Hannay did not want to depart before the potential main act.

He lost count of the number of times he met Fitzgibbon in the “shittiest head coach’s office in professional sport”, discussing what he should do.

Fitzgibbon’s calming nature and ability to ignore the lack of external respect, which Cronulla will never receive until they win a premiership, also moulded Hannay’s coaching philosophy.

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“If he was feeling good or had a lot of crap on his mind, Fitzy was always measured, there was little fluctuation in his mood, and that rubbed off on everyone else,” Hannay said.

“Being at Cronulla also opened my eyes to how fickle the external side of the game can be with the media and expert opinions. We won a bucklet-load of games, but it never seemed to be enough.

“I’m now at the Titans, we’re coming from a long way back (16th), but I know not to try and please everyone, not to be driven to prove people wrong, or be influenced by outside opinion. All we can control is what we can control.”

Hannay’s apprenticeship was completed under Slater, who made him feel right at home when he joined the Maroons’ coaching staff, despite being in the presence of Queensland royalty Thurston and Cameron Smith.

Those early days in Origin camps made Hannay feel like an imposter because of the star power available to Slater.

“But Billy makes people believe in themselves and believe they can do special things,” Hannay said.

“He put that belief in me and made me realise, ‘maybe I can be a good coach and work with the best players’. That gave me enormous confidence.”

Hannay is making the Titans players believe. One of those is Saturday’s new No. 7, Lachlan Ilias, who replaces the injured Jayden Campbell. Ilias fell out of favour at South Sydney and St George Illawarra before landing on the Titans’ radar accidentally.

Hannay said he had met Dragons counterpart Shane Flanagan to discuss another player, only for Ilias to be mentioned in passing conversation.

The Titans have lacked consistency for far too long. Hannay wants to change that.

There will also be some Cronulla flavour in the Titans’ game, which Hannay makes no apologies for.

“Having been a part of what we created the last few years there, I believe in the way Cronulla play, it’s a good style of football, and it would be hard not to walk away from that and take a few parts with me,” he said.

“There might be some similarities, but at the end of the day, I need to be my own coach and have my own style. And I will.”

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