{"id":138649,"date":"2021-10-03T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-03T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=138649"},"modified":"2021-10-04T02:02:14","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T02:02:14","slug":"why-panicked-ivan-cleary-woke-up-at-2am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=138649","title":{"rendered":"Why panicked Ivan Cleary 'woke up at 2am'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penrith<\/a> coach Ivan Cleary<\/a> has revealed he woke at 2am yesterday, worried by the prospect his injury-riddled side<\/a> would be decimated in the opening stages of the NRL grand final.<\/p>\n

The Panthers mentor has finally tasted premiership success, after a career that spanned 186 games as a player and a further 369 as a coach.<\/p>\n

This was his fourth NRL grand final – he played fullback for the Warriors in their 2002 defeat, before coaching the club to the 2011 decider, as well as Penrith's loss last year to Melbourne.<\/p>\n

"I couldn't bear thinking about losing, since I was a fan, a player, an assistant coach, a coach, it's probably 45 years never winning a grand final," Cleary said.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Two late non-calls that burned Bunnies<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Reynolds blows chance to be Souths' hero<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> GF gets nasty as Panthers gun provokes gutted star<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Walker gets personal with Cleary in epic GF try<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

"I'm going to make this one last, I can tell you!"<\/p>\n

Four Panthers players – Dylan Edwards, Nathan Cleary, Brian To'o and James Fisher-Harris took injuries into the match.<\/p>\n

It meant the team hadn't trained properly since the finals began, having had to progress to the decider the hard way after losing to Souths in the opening week.<\/p>\n

"I just can't rap the boys enough. The courage that these boys have shown, we really couldn't train the last three weeks as a team, so many guys not training … I think it's purely on courage that these boys have won this," he said.<\/p>\n

"I reckon there was at least five that probably shouldn't have been playing today. I don't say that lightly. It was a calculated risk on a lot of boys.<\/p>\n

"I actually woke up at 2am this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep because I was thinking, 'My god, honestly three or four of them could be gone by ten minutes [into the grand final].'<\/p>\n

\"Penrith<\/p>\n

"But it was calculated and they just refused not to play. Fish [James Fisher-Harris], Moses [Leota], Dyl Edwards.<\/p>\n

"Dyl Edwards, oh my god, he's had a broken foot for like a month. He has not trained, walked around on crutches every week and then goes out and plays. I don't understand how that can happen but it just sums up the bond.<\/p>\n

"We've had a lot of guys play injured throughout the season, Bizza [Brian To'o] in particular played twice with a syndesmosis injury and never came off. I remember Tyrone May doing his MCL badly twice and kept playing.<\/p>\n

"They just created this culture of unfortunately no one wanted to be the one to put their hand up and say they can't play. It's hard for me to explain, it's incredible."<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em> clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Penrith coach Ivan Cleary has revealed he woke at 2am yesterday, worried by the prospect his injury-riddled side would be decimated in the opening stages […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138649"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138651,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138649\/revisions\/138651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}