Ivan Cleary and Craig Bellamy are the pre-eminent coaches of their time, yet they barely know each other.
They’ve met only a handful of times – the first coincidentally on holidays early into their respective coaching careers – but for the past 20 seasons or so they’ve been passing ships in the night.
There’s an abiding respect, however, between the men, and indeed their clubs, which conflicts with some of the flimsy narratives the media have stirred this week about a deep-seated animosity bubbling between the teams.
In fact, when Penrith held a three-day summit at the end of a dreadful 2019 season that almost prompted Cleary to quit, the club they wanted to become was the Melbourne Storm.
Consistency is in the woodwork of some clubs and the Storm are one of them. Since they were busted for cheating the salary cap in 2010, they have made 11 preliminary finals, five grand finals, and won three premierships.
Penrith had won titles before – in 1991 and 2003 – but slid down the greasy pole of success almost straight away. Cleary wanted to instil the same winning culture as Melbourne.
Ivan Cleary and Craig Bellamy.Credit: Steven Siewert
Fast forward to last year’s preliminary final against the Storm.
In the days before the match, Cleary revealed to his players that his reason for getting out of bed in the morning was their biggest rival.
“I’m inspired by Melbourne,” he said. “I started coaching [in 2006] when they started winning. They’ve made eight of the last nine preliminary finals. That’s phenomenal. They’re still there now, even though people say they’re not playing well. They haven’t had the greatest year compared to what they’ve done before. But I totally respect them. I totally respect Craig Bellamy and what they’ve done at that club.”
When I watched this footage the first time on the superb in-house docuseries Undisputed, I couldn’t help but think of coaching greats like Bob Fulton, Wayne Bennett, Warren Ryan and, of course, the Herald’s Roy Masters, who manufactured hate as well as anyone while coaching Western Suburbs in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Would these coaches have ever been so complimentary about their opponents? With a camera rolling?
In another era, coaches would unearth the most personal of insults for their players to use on the other team’s superstar player. Here Cleary was lavishing praise on the rival team and coach before a grand-final qualifier.
He had two objectives.
First, he wanted his players to be wary of who they were playing. Melbourne had been off all year, including two losses to the Panthers during the home-and-away season, but were still capable of beating anyone on the day.
Storm coach Craig Bellamy is a master of his craft. Credit: Getty Images
Second, he wanted to show them how far they had come since losing the 2020 grand final to the same team. They had replaced the Storm as the high-water mark of the premiership.
Penrith won the preliminary final 38-4 before clinching their third successive premiership with that mesmerising victory against Brisbane in the decider.
The club reached its cultural nadir in 2019 because of the so-called sex-tape scandal, but the 2020 grand final loss was a watershed moment in its recent history.
Much like the Broncos in 2006 gave Melbourne a lesson in how to play a grand final, Melbourne gave one to Penrith. They stood offside, rushing up in defence to kill off any trick plays before they started. They bullied them in the tackle, they lay over the ball carrier for a nanosecond too long and got away with it.
Penrith Panthers Coach Ivan Cleary.Credit: Janie Barrett
The Storm were being the Storm, displaying all the subtleties that make them such a polarising team.
Ivan Cleary is not a Melbourne hater. He admires the way they push the rules. Similar criticism has been levelled at his team for its use of blockers – some legal, some not so much – but he knows that goes with the territory of being a ruthless football team.
The Storm jumped Penrith that night, leading 22-0 at halftime. Penrith fought back before eventually losing 26-20.
Nathan Cleary blamed himself for the loss, telling his teammates afterwards that he’d let them down, but his father acknowledged what they’d been up against.
‘I totally respect them. I totally respect Craig Bellamy and what they’ve done at that club.’
Ivan Cleary on Storm counterpart Craig Bellamy
“As long as I’ve been around coaching, Melbourne have been at the top of the tree,” he said at the post-match media conference. “And their victory tonight is the reward for their consistency. You can’t do anything but admire that. It’s something we’d like to aspire to.”
Departing Penrith captain James Tamou could see the silver lining.
“It will be scary coming up against Penrith next year,” he said. “These guys, what they do on the training paddock and what they do in a game, surprises me every day. I’m looking forward to watching them. They’ll learn from this.”
Heading into the 2021 season, the Panthers had a point to prove. Ivan was being hailed “the next Brian Smith”, a reference to the former St George, Parramatta, and Roosters coach who history unkindly remembers for losing grand finals.
Penrith started the pre-season with a “fight camp” in Hawkesbury, resolute they would never be bullied again, but prop James Fisher-Harris didn’t need to be fired up. Days after the grand final loss, he was spotted on long road runs with tears of disappointment and frustration streaming down his face.
There was a touch of serendipity when Penrith and the Storm squared off in the 2021 preliminary final later that year.
The Panthers were busted with most of their squad carrying some sort of injury, not least fullback Dylan Edwards who was playing with a broken foot.
They weren’t going to be bullied, especially the first 20 minutes like the previous year’s grand final. This time Penrith would be the aggressor.
They also had a trick play up their sleeve: a sneaky cross-field kick from dummy half from dummy half when camped on the Storm line.
Roosters fullback James Tedesco had done it against the Storm earlier in the year and the Penrith coaching staff kept in their back pocket hoping to use it in a headline match at the right time.
Three minutes into the preliminary, Nathan raced into dummy half and kicked out wide to an unmarked Stephen Crichton to score the opening four-pointer.
They ground out a tough 10-6 win before beating Souths in the grand final, putting the first brick in their dynasty in place.
Since then, the Panthers have become the new Melbourne.
“When we were growing up watching football, Melbourne were the benchmark,” co-captain Isaah Yeo offers. “They had so much success, had all the best players, you watched them and admired them. To be there or thereabouts what feels like the last 15 or 20 years … it’s hard to be consistent and hard to be at that level for so long.
“So there’s certainly a respect there. We’ve had some wonderful battles with them – we’ve had some real nail-biters. We’re different, we’re our own club on our own journey, different players and different styles, but there’s a respect there because of how successful they’ve been.”
The weird thing is the current incarnation of Penrith is identical to how the Storm have gone about their business at various times during Bellamy’s 20-year reign.
Like most premiership-winning teams, the success of both sides is grounded in redoubtable defence, chasing kicks like hungry Dobermans, and relying heavily on premier game-managers like Cleary and Jahrome Hughes.
“You have the utmost respect for them when you come up against them,” backrower Liam Martin says. “You have the utmost respect for them when you come up against them, but that means you want to go that bit harder against them.”
You sense Martin and his teammates will need to go as hard as they can because there’s another Melbourne trait they have surely noticed: they like to get square after a loss.
Will the team to bring an end to Penrith’s dynasty be the one who inspired it in the first place?
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