If you were so inclined to hack into a company’s computer system this week searching for delicate information that should never be released publicly, which company would it be?
Hack rugby league reporters might be tempted to hack into the Parramatta archives and find a video from October 2013 in which Jason Taylor talks about his new job as head coach.
Unfortunately, the video was deleted after the club’s volatile board backflipped on their decision a week earlier to go with Taylor – and appointed Brad Arthur.
When Arthur takes his place in the coach’s box for Sunday night’s grand final against Penrith, you wonder if he’ll take a moment to reflect on the dramatic series of events that led to him landing the job – because it went painfully close to never happening.
If not for some boardroom trickery so typical of Parramatta at the time, it would never have happened.
The salary cap scandal of 2016 is considered the club’s rock bottom, but 2013 was no less of a car crash.
Parramatta coach Brad Arthur went perilously close to never getting the job.Credit:Getty
After his side finished last, coach Ricky Stuart high-tailed it to Canberra with two years remaining on his contract.
Earlier that year, chairman Roy Spagnolo and his 3P ticket were rolled in Leagues club elections by former premiership-winner Steve Sharp and his ParraFirst ticket.
After Stuart’s hasty exit, Sharp publicly declared he wanted Arthur, who was an assistant at Manly, to get the job.
The only problem was Sharp didn’t have the numbers on his own board. Never a good sign for a chair.
At a board meeting in early October, directors voted 3-2 in favour of Taylor with finer details of the contract still to be rubber-stamped at another meeting in a week’s time.
But the deal was effectively done, so much so that the club’s media department interviewed Taylor in the grandstand of the old Parramatta Stadium.
That’s where former director Mario Libertini comes in. He had the casting vote that changed the course of history.
A trusty lieutenant to Spagnolo, Libertini was ousted from the Leagues club board – which controls the NRL team – earlier that year.
But under Parramatta’s convoluted constitution at the time, he was still on the football club board so he was qualified to come onto the Leagues club board at any time.
Jason Taylor was almost anointed Eels coach over Brad Arthur.Credit:Dallas Kilponen
Libertini was so out in the cold that he wasn’t at the meeting when Taylor was given the nod.
We tracked him down to tell us what happened next.
“I got a phone call from [then chief executive] Scott Seward who said I had to do whatever I could to get back onto the board because they’re about to give the job to Jason Taylor and he’s asking for bonuses if he finishes ninth to 12th,” Libertini said. “And he wants a shitload of money.
“I was like, ‘Hang on, he’s got no pedigree. Why would he be asking for that stuff?’”
Libertini was headed to the Hawkesbury for the weekend but called Sharp and left a message: “I know that you were supporting Brad and not Jason Taylor – you definitely need my support”.
Sharp didn’t return the call straight away and for the next few days Libertini was out of mobile phone range.
As Libertini made his way back to Sydney, his phone exploded with messages. One was from Sharp: “Call me”.
Sharp had already convinced another director, Peter Serrao, to change his vote.
“I told Steve to not tell anybody that I would come to the board meeting on the Tuesday night,” Libertini recalled. “Before the meeting, I phoned Brad, who was on holiday in Bali. I told him that I’d be voting for him to reverse the decision. He said, ‘It’s done, Jason Taylor’s already done a video. I’ve missed the gig’.
“I walked into the boardroom and everyone’s jaw dropped. They’d seen a ghost. They knew I wasn’t a Jason Taylor man.
“I told them that I’d been on the board for six years and we’d given our coaches every possible tool to be successful and they’d delivered a duck egg. ‘Now you guys are about to give a job to a guy who wants to be rewarded with bonuses for finishing between ninth and 12th. We have this other bloke who will do the job for half the money, who loves Parra. Why wouldn’t we give him a go? We’ve given everyone else a go, paid them a motza and they’ve given us nothing’.”
Taylor declined to comment when contacted on Thursday but he told those close to him at the time that a sticking point had been the likely appointment of Daniel Anderson as head of football.
He had worked under John Lang in his previous job at Souths and wasn’t keen to have Anderson’s shadow looming over him.
He downplayed how advanced negotiations were, although he had told the Roosters, for whom he was an assistant coach, he had taken the job.
Then there’s the interview that never saw the light of day.
It was deleted on the same day of the media release announcing Arthur’s appointment — although there’s talk that a VCR recording exists of the interview.
What did Taylor say? Not much, according to very few people who have seen it.
He outlined his vision to turn the Eels into a team that can compete for grand finals.
Taylor’s vision has become Brad Arthur’s reality.
Kikau to win Churchill for chilled Panthers
All the pressure is on Penrith to win this grand final. No team wants to reach the Big Dance for three consecutive years to only come away with one trophy.
Despite this, the Panthers are a team rarely rattled.
They’ve carried the burden of heavy favouritism all season, to the point where the premiership has almost been considered a given.
Viliame Kikau hasn’t missed a beat this season despite signing with the Bulldogs for 2023.Credit:Getty
They let in two tries against Souths in the preliminary and didn’t flinch. Lesser sides would have panicked.
Their best player, Nathan Cleary, cops a five-week suspension and it merely gives him a time to freshen up post-Origin, giving the definitive footy nerd time to hit the books and pore over video.
Perhaps the greatest sign of their strength is how hooker Api Koroisau (Tigers) and Viliame Kikau (Bulldogs) signed with other clubs late last year for 2023 — how are those proposed transfer windows going, NRL? — but it hasn’t affected their performances.
You might recall Kikau was booed at last year’s fan day in Penrith celebrating the 2021 premiership after grainy CCTV footage leaked of Kikau of wearing a Bulldogs polo shirt alongside Phil Gould and Trent Barrett.
Despite this, “Kikausaurus” has become even better this year, whether it’s a subtle pass, even a nonchalant grubber into the in-goal. He charges down kicks, comes like a missile out of the line, and then there’s the not-so-simple task of stopping him when he’s in open space.
He’ll finish Sunday night with the Clive Churchill Medal around his neck. You heard it here first — unless it doesn’t happen, of course.
The grand final party for fans in need
Four-time premiership-winning Parramatta fullback Paul Taylor opened up earlier this week about how he was homeless and living on one-dollar hash browns from McDonald’s after he lost his job and his marriage broke down.
“I look at homeless people now and feel sorry for them because I understand what they’re going through,” he told News Corp. “I don’t disrespect them. Sometimes they don’t have any support, they don’t have anything.”
There is support, such as the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross, which will hold a grand final party on Sunday night.
“I just saw all the crew looking so excited that their teams were in the grand final and realised that they have nowhere to watch it with mates over a hot pie and sauce,” Wayside pastor and chief executive Jon Owen told us. “Then I remembered: ‘Oh yeah, we are freaking Wayside’. I asked everyone if they’d do an extra hour and no one hesitated.”
Owen is a Storm supporter. Don’t hold that against him.
THE QUOTE
“That is an old-fashioned stiffy.” – Fox Sports Steve Roach after Souths winger Taane Milne was sent after his stiff-arm to the forehead of Panthers forward Spencer Leniu. Never change, Block. Never change.
Taane Milne was sent off against the Panthers.Credit:Getty
THUMBS UP
Sharks halfback Nicho Hynes wrapped up the Dally Ms with two rounds left of voting and with the most points in the award’s history. He then delivered a knockout speech, thanking those who had helped him along the way. How lucky for the game this is the new face of rugby league.
THUMBS DOWN
The Swans. The Wallabies. The Bunker. The Captain’s Challenge. Corey Parker bagging Latrell Mitchell’s fitness when he was playing injured. Five-leg multis. Four-leg multis. And just the general self-loathing that comes this weekend when you realise your footy team is years away from ever playing in a grand final.
It’s a big weekend for … Newcastle and Parramatta as they rip into each other in the NRLW final at Accor Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Teenager Jesse Southwell could end up being the Knights’ greatest halfback since Andrew Johns. #shakaemoji
It’s an even bigger weekend for … Jimmy Barnes, who accepts the poisoned chalice better known as “the NRL grand final pre-match entertainment”. We’ll back Barnesy in, though. Hopefully – surely! – (Simply) The Best, which he recorded with Tina Turner for the NSWRL in 1992, gets a run.
