Ivan Cleary to celebrate 500 games as head coach
In the week leading up to his 300th game as a first-grade coach, way back in 2019, Ivan Cleary smiled and said: “I’m happy to have been able to survive this long. It’s not easy to survive.”
Cleary had no idea he would go on to coach his 400th game at the start of the 2023 season, against Parramatta and Brad Arthur, who was “jealous” of Cleary’s achievements. He had only won two premierships at the time.
On Sunday, when asked about coaching his 500th game, Cleary did his best to run a mile from the spotlight.
That milestone will arrive on Thursday night, making him just the seventh coach to reach 500 games. South Sydney’s Wayne Bennett (983), Melbourne’s Craig Bellamy (625) and Canberra’s Ricky Stuart (564) are the current coaches above him on the leaderboard.
“I must say it’s a surprise, but it’s another game – the most important thing is we play well,” Cleary said. “I’m glad I’ve survived that long, but I guess I’m old-fashioned; milestones don’t mean that much to me.
“I’m glad I’m still here, and appreciate everyone who has helped me along the way; I’ve had some good players, staff and administrators to keep me going.
“I go to work like you do. I’m lucky I like what I do. There are so many rewards to it; I feel privileged to be in this position.”
Cleary is unlikely to reach 600 games after he announced at the start of the year he would finish up as Penrith coach at the end of the 2027 season, and make way for his assistant Peter Wallace.
A water-cooler debate among Penrith fans that will rage forever will be which Cleary has been more important to Penrith: Ivan or his son and halfback Nathan Cleary.
One thing for certain is the Panthers will need both of them at their best if they are to win a fifth title in six seasons, especially after losing co-captain Isaah Yeo to a pec injury, possibly for the rest of the season, not to mention a couple of tight losses to premiership contenders the Warriors and Roosters in the past fortnight.
Cleary said the benefit of coming up against such top-shelf competition was that those teams had “exposed them in a couple of areas”, which may not have happened playing against teams further down the ladder.
Centre Paul Alamoti (hamstring) will be missing for a couple of weeks, but Casey McLean is a good chance to return against the Storm in Melbourne on Thursday after overcoming a broken hand. The Panthers have missed McLean’s X-factor out wide.
“Yeah, very hopeful,” Cleary said of having McLean on deck for the game at AAMI Park.
“It’s timely with Paul going out. Casey is one of our strike players. You want as many guys on board as you can. Let’s hope [he’s back].
“We’re definitely not where we need to be. We got off to an amazing start, and even mid-season, it was almost going too well. Only a few weeks ago against Canberra I thought we had a really strong game. The last couple of weeks we have been below where we’ve needed to be, but still been competitive.
“If we can work on the few things we need to improve, we’ll give ourselves some sort of hope at the back end.”
