According to NRL.com, Ivan Cleary has been offered a four-year deal to coach the Panthers as a replacement for Anthony Griffin, and Phil Gould has set about dropping some truth bombs that he was instrumental in the decision to both fire Griffin and offer Cleary a contract.
The rugby league world was turned on its head when they learned that Griffin had been sacked by Penrith, effective immediately, with highly respected deputy Cameron Ciraldo take over on an interim basis.
Most fingers were shoved in Gould's face, with the Panthers boss held accountable for the decision.
But Gould has revealed that if things went his way, Griffin would have seen out the remainder of the 2018 season with a decision to take place in the off-season.
"It's sexy to blame me but when the truth finally comes out and everyone looks at it in the cold light of day, there's a different story to this," Gould said on Six Tackles With Gus.
"I would not normally end a coach's services unless I had a plan in place, and I've got no plan in place at the moment to replace Anthony Griffin. Even though I have contemplated it over the past 12 months, I really didn't have a viable option available to us.
"To Anthony Griffin, over the last 12 months, we've been trying to give him as much support as possible. I've used the term 'old school', he's someone who likes to be very much in control of everything that happens and he likes to do all the coaching himself, and we were feeling that sometimes things were overlooked or communication wasn't as good as it should have been, or that it was leading to a bit of confusion and unrest in the staff.
"We have been managing this process for 12 months and tried to give him all the support we could. During the year, a lot of the media reports that kept leaking about Anthony Griffin and what was happening with the Panthers, it was adding to the pressure. I kept trying to reassure Anthony that I was supporting him and we were going to continue on, I kept trying to help him understand that there were other ways to do what he was doing and that he needed to look for assistance in a number of areas.
"When stories start to get into the paper that someone else is coaching the side, or that Cameron Ciraldo was doing most of the work, I think it eventually eats away at Griffin until he approached the management and said, 'I just want to be able to do this myself and I'm being undermined'.
"We assured Anthony he wasn't being undermined, we were all supporting him, but once the club's executive did a review and spoke to staff and players, the review didn't come back all that good. If the executive had their way, Anthony might have been terminated a couple of months ago.
"But, it was my recommendation that we couldn't do that mid-season and we should look at it after this season was over. Over the last few weeks, Anthony has gone back to doing things his way and it was causing a little bit more friction and unrest. I had a meeting with our chairman last Monday, who said that this was becoming untenable, and I said, 'you've got to let me keep managing it, there's nothing we can do about it'.
"At which time the chairman asked to discuss what the long-term options were if Anthony Griffin wasn't at Penrith in 2019.
"Unbeknownst to me, the following day, Ivan Cleary and David O'Neill had agreed to have a meeting, and I believe the meeting on Tuesday was to discuss the sale of Ivan's house. That conversation, as it usually does, gets around to football and the future and Dave innocently asked him, "would you ever come back to Panthers one day?'.
"As I understand it, that conversation escalated over the next couple of days to the point where on Friday I was informed by Dave that Ivan was keen to go and have a talk to the Wests Tigers about his long-term future with a view towards one day returning to Penrith.
"I can tell you that I've had no discussion with Ivan Cleary. Any suggestions that I have been apart of this Ivan Cleary approach are scurrilous in the extreme. As I understand it, Ivan has not asked from a release from the Wests Tigers.
"My intention was to have Anthony Griffin coach until the end of the season and then have a review and look at how we get through the next two years, and if it became untenable then we'd have to look around for another option."
Cleary has previously been at the helm at the foot of the mountains, coaching Penrith from 2012-2015 until he was let go by Gould and the Panthers.
"I agonised over sacking Ivan Cleary for months, I just felt that as a coach he was struggling, that he'd had six straight years at the Warriors, four tough years at the Panthers, and there a few things happening internally at Penrith. It was all very amicable, obviously, he was upset, and I knew he'd be angry at me and I understood that, but sometimes you've got to make those decisions," Gould said.
"I felt it was in his best interests, and I felt that it was in our club's best interests. I got to the point where I felt Ivan needed a rest for 12 months, and it hasn't hurt him by the way."
