Cleary in line for coach of the year award

Two-time recipient John Lang says Ivan Cleary must be rewarded for transforming Penrith from also-rans to premiership contenders with the NRL’s coach of the year award.

Regardless of whether the Panthers win or lose their grand final qualifier against Canterbury on Saturday night, Lang believes Cleary has already achieved enough with Penrith’s bunch of misfits to edge out Sydney Roosters coach Trent Robinson for the coveted gong.

While a star-studded roster full of State of Origin and Test representatives earned Robinson’s Roosters a second straight minor premiership, Cleary has worked miracles to guide Penrith to within just one win of their first grand final since Lang’s Panthers won the title in 2003.

The Penrith outfit that shocked the Roosters in the qualifying final last weekend doesn’t contain any 2014 State of Origin players.

“Ivan’s a terribly good coach and he’s done a particularly good job this year,” Lang told AAP.

“With the injuries they’ve had, just to be able to keep the side chugging along and, really, they only just missed out on the minor premiership themselves.

“If things had have fallen their way, they might well have won that.

“They’ve been up there all year so I think he’d be a very good nomination for coach of the year. He’d get my vote.

“Trent Robinson has come back and won two minor premierships but, if Ivan won it, I don’t think there’d be too many people complaining about it.”

The award will announced on Dally M Medal night on Tuesday week and, if he wins, Cleary will be the first Penrith mentor to do so in 30 years.

Tim Sheens was the last Panthers mentor crowned coach of the year back in 1984, while Lang collected his two awards while in charge of Cronulla in 1995 and 1999.

Now in his third season with the Panthers, Cleary worked similar magic with the Warriors to coach the enigmatic New Zealand outfit to the 2011 grand final.

A goalkicking fullback who played in the Warriors’ 2002 grand final loss to the Roosters, Cleary made his first impression on Lang as a coach during his maiden season with the Panthers.

“I was in a competition committee meeting and we were talking about some rule change and Penrith were really struggling,” Lang recalled.

“Somebody said: ‘Maybe we could try it out in one of the dead-rubber NRL games’ and Ivan Cleary said: ‘There’s no such thing as a dead rubber in the NRL’ and it came from down deep, I can tell you.

“This is his third year now with Penrith and he’s done a really good job bringing those young guys through.

“And he’s got Jamie Soward back to the form that he showed when he won the comp, so Ivan’s obviously shown confidence in him.

“I’ve always thought he was a really good professional, Ivan. He just gets on and does his job.”

Stay up to date with the latest sports news
Follow our social accounts to get exclusive content and all the latest sporting news!