G'day, it's Gus Walland here,
host of Not an Overnight Success,
the only podcast in the world
that gives every guest $10,000
to give away to a charity of their choice.
Today, it's Gus Gould,
a guy that I've known for many, many years,
but this chat, I've never seen him more vulnerable,
more lighthearted, talking about his family,
having so much fun.
He's normally sort of has a reputation
of being a little bit grouchy,
but this was a really fun chat with Gus.
I hope you enjoy.
Now it's Phil Gould, but you're called Gus.
Why are you called Gus and not Phil?
A footy mate gave me that.
The nicknames were all the rage
back when I was playing footy back in the 70s.
Good football mate gave me that nickname.
Ken Wilson passed away recently.
We were playing at Newtown at the time.
We were actually on a road run around Coogee.
It was a road run where the forwards took off first
and then the backs took off second.
So of course, the first forward that they caught up to
with me as we're going up Beach Street Hill there at Coogee.
And I was struggling a bit
because we'd been out the night before.
So as I was doing that,
I think the 373 to Clivelli bus was driving up the hill
and Kenny said, get on the bus, Gus.
I stuck it out and the name stuck.
Of course, that's great.
So Gus Phil Gould is the child.
Where did you grow up?
What was your family like?
Crikey, long time ago now.
My family life was perfect.
I really couldn't have been any better.
I had great parents and I had one brother.
He was a couple of years younger than me.
Dad was a policeman.
In the early years, he worked at New Down Police Station
And around that time,
his station sergeant gave him somewhere to stay,
which was a little one-man police station
at Cooks River down at Tempe.
It's on the Princess Highway there at Tempe.
It had two bedrooms and two jail cells.
That's where I lived the first five years of my life.
Okay. Did you get a bedroom
or would you have to lob into the cell?
I only vaguely remember parts of it,
but there was a bedroom for me and my brother
and a bedroom for mum and dad and two jail cells.
And I can remember dad bringing drunks home
and throwing them in the slammer for the night to cool off.
And New Down Police Station
and a lot of the Newtown first grade footballers
were policemen in those days.
A fellow by the name of Chicken Moore, Brian Chicken Moore,
who played for Australia, went on a kangaroo tour.
They often had to go out and deal with rowdy people
at the local establishments.
Some they had to arrest and bring home
and they'd come and put them in a slammer for the night
rather than charge them with anything
and let them go the next morning.
But that's the first five years.
And he got it rent free and that's how he saved up
for mum and dad's first block of land,
which was out at Marylands.
So at the age of five in 1963,
we moved to the western suburbs of Sydney, Marylands.
That's where we grew up.
And my mother dedicated herself as a housewife.
She was a schoolteacher, I think, by education,
but her mother was a schoolteacher,
but she was a stay-at-home mum and looked after us.
It was all sport and sport and more sport.
And that was it, friends and sport.
That's what I remember in my childhood.
You got a big smile on your face
when you talk about your mum and dad and so forth.
And a simple but just lovely childhood.
Yeah, couldn't have wanted for anything.
Dad passed away about eight years ago.
He had 10 years with dementia, which was a terrible time.
Mum's just about to turn 90.
She's had a rough 12 months.
She fell and broke her hip.
She's living on her own at home.
And then she races to the phone the other night
and falls over and breaks her wrist.
So she's back in hospital again.
Well, she went and got her arms set,
but she doesn't, when she broke her hip,
I go out every Sunday.
I go out every Sunday and sit with her.
And we have some lunch and we watch the cricket
or the football, whatever's on.
That's where I go and see mum.
When I was working at Penrith, I used to call her around.
She lives out of Covarty.
I used to call her around a couple of more times a day,
but I'd definitely get out there
at least the once a week to see her.
And I went out this Sunday and she was sitting.
She said, I can't make you lunch today.
She was sitting in a chair and I said, oh, that's okay.
And I went and got lunch and did everything like that.
And when I come back a week later, she hadn't moved.
And I said, have you been out of that chair?
She said, I can't.
She said, I had a fall.
She didn't tell us for a week.
There's still a Campbelltown hospital talking about
the old lady who walked in with no hip.
She'd actually broken the ball off the hip joint,
And yeah, so she was in hospital.
She went into hospital for four months.
She got infections.
She got everything you could possibly get
while she's trying to rehab from this hip.
And we finally got her home.
She's very independent.
She lives on her own.
Yeah, she sounds like it.
So she went into hospital with one thing and came out
and had to deal with four or five.
Well, the longer she stayed there, the sicker she got.
And in the end, they wanted to put her in a home.
I said, and she got all panicked.
I said, mom, you're not going into a home.
I promise you, you're not going into a home.
And I said to them, I'm checking her out.
Because I just felt that a lot of the things
she was getting was because she was in the hospital
and constantly on medication and everything.
So we got her out and she's been as good as gold ever since.
Yep, back home where she's safe and feels comfortable.
Yeah, she lives in her little retirement village,
but she's got her own home.
Like she lives in her own space there.
And she's got some nice ladies who live
in the houses next door.
So it's nice and social for us.
So, yeah, and I get out to see her.
I know my brother and his kids live in the area.
So they get around to see her if she needs anything.
But yeah, she's still kicking on.
OK, I was going to ask you about your brother.
So he was a little bit younger than you.
Two years younger.
And were you great mates?
Did you used to fight?
Did you was sport the thing that bonded you together?
What was your relationship like with all of that?
OK, yeah, we were different in a lot of ways.
And John was asthmatic as a kid.
So he's restricted in his sports.
He played cricket and golf.
And when he played soccer, he had to be the goalkeeper.
And that's where he was where my sporting life was a little bit
different to that.
But yeah, and he ended up a schoolteacher.
He became a schoolteacher like mum.
And then he ended up managing clubs.
He worked in the hospitality industry.
When I was in the 80s, I was working in the poker machine
And John gravitated into the hospitality industry.
And then he went to work for the same poker machine company
that I was working.
And he still works in gaming and hospitality today and travels
around the world looking after casinos and all sorts of things.
So he's doing really well.
And he's got had kids?
Yeah, yeah, I don't have grandkids.
He's got plenty of grandkids.
Do you want grandkids?
Well, I haven't discussed that with them.
I don't know that I've got any intention, I've got to be honest.
I've got two beautiful daughters and a son.
They're all in their early 20s.
But yeah, unless there's an accident,
I can't see it happening anytime soon.
Well, I've got three.
I've got a son and two daughters and 23 to 20.
And I'm very happy to shoulder arms on being a granddad for a few years yet.
Yeah, I don't know how much time I've got left.
I'm not forcing them into it.
But I think I think my wife would love to have grandkids.
Yeah, no, I don't see it on the horizon, to be honest.
OK, so let's rewind it back again.
So you're having a happy life.
You're going through sports.
Seems a big thing.
You've mentioned that already, not just rugby league, obviously.
So what was other sports and were you any good at them?
I was a better cricketer than a footballer.
I played a lot of cricket as a kid.
Batsman, bowler, all rounder?
Yeah, pretty much everything.
I actually, at 14 years of age, I played A grade with Dad.
So like I picked in the local A grade team, Dad was playing cricket.
What was that like playing with your old man at that age?
Yeah, incredible.
Well, it's incredible to think about it now.
You don't really realise it at the time how, you know,
which is the same with a lot of your life.
You don't realise you're going through the best time of your life when you are.
Yeah, it was quite remarkable.
And I remember the day he gave me the wicket keeping gloves
because he was the team wicket keeper.
And he gave them to me when I was 15.
And I played A grade with the Wennie Waratahs.
Went with the Waratahs out there in the Golden West.
Can you remember how you went that first game, Gus?
No, not offhand, not offhand.
But I was a pretty fair cricketer.
I played a lot of junior rep cricket.
I played men's and I was playing men's cricket at like 12 years of age.
So I'd play boys cricket in the morning and come home and then go have lunch
and go out and play with the men in the afternoon.
Best Saturday ever.
Yeah, absolutely.
I could just get home in time to watch World Championship Wrestling,
which was on at midday.
So that was you in between.
Chuck a bit of sandwich in and out again.
A couple of banana sandwiches and out to go again.
Yeah, out in the heat.
No, that's the way it was.
That's the way it was.
A bit of Coppertone on and away you go.
So a bit of zinc on the nose.
Whatever Dennis Lilly was wearing, I suppose, or one of the chapels.
So cricket was your thing in the summer and then rugby and rugby league
or just rugby league in the winter?
Mum said rugby league was too dangerous.
That's back in the 60s.
So I was the kid in the soccer team who bought the rugby league ball to training.
So when I remember my first soccer coach, Mr. Basler,
he used to get to shake his head because he was an avid soccer football fan,
an avid soccer football fan, and I was pretty good at it.
And he, you know, and he would get so frustrated because when he got there,
I'd have him all playing touch footy.
Anyway, after a few years, he said, mate, rugby league's down the road.
You're going to have to you're going to have to go down there.
See you, brother.
We're trying to play soccer.
So rugby league then became your passion or just something you love to do?
I played I played at school and then I eventually went to went with all these clubs.
It's a big club out west out there and played there in my teen years.
When we got through to sixth form, which is year 12,
back in the old days, we called it sixth form.
It was your final year where you do your HSC.
Yeah, that was me too. I left 86.
So we're still doing that then.
Yeah. So in 1975 was my when I went to fifth form,
I kind of got distracted a little bit and I didn't concentrate too well.
So Mum and Dad barred me from any sport in my sixth form year.
Oh, I wasn't allowed to play any sport.
How did that go down?
I had to concentrate to do my HSC because the HSC is everything.
Like if you fail the HSC, you'll never get a job.
You know what it was like back in the old days.
And it was a lot of pressure on.
So yeah, they wouldn't let me play sport in 1975
because I had to concentrate and get my HSC, which was fine
because luckily enough schoolwork came easy to me and I got really good results.
But yeah, so I didn't play sport that year.
That would have been really hard for you.
That would have been your opportunity to be the leader,
to be captain, all that type of stuff.
Yeah, it was. Yeah.
A lot of my mates that I'd sort of grown up with until year 10,
which was fourth forms, because the old days, people that live in fourth form.
Yeah. And get a trade and an apprenticeship or go and work at the abattoirs.
Yeah. Go on the dole, whatever it was they were doing.
You know, and Mum and Dad made me go on to fifth and sixth form.
And there's only a handful of us in our school.
There weren't that many that went on to those years.
Most people left in year 10 or fourth form. OK.
So most of the blokes that I've been hanging around with left.
So I had to make a new group of friends at school for those final couple of years,
which is why I was a bit recalcitrant in the first year,
because all my mates were out doing things and I was still at school.
Yeah. You wanted to be with them.
I wanted to be with them. And I was.
Regularly. Right.
Until I got caught.
And then so, yeah, so it was the only time,
only time I got, wasn't the only time I got caught out of the cruice, but
sixth form, they made me stay and concentrate and stay and concentrate.
And you said you were good at school.
So could you have gone on to uni if you wanted to?
Well, I did go on to uni.
OK, so what happened then?
So I qualified for uni.
So sixth form finishes and Dad said, are you going to go to uni?
I said, no, I'm not going to uni.
And he said, all right, well, you can start work.
And he got me a job the next day.
I finished my sixth form exams and the next day I'm working at Regents Park
at a place called Bailey Meter as a trainee accountant.
So I had two shirts, two pair of pants and one tie.
And it all matched so I could just have a different outfit every day.
And I had my car and I'd drive from home to Bailey Meter.
And I became a trainee accountant.
So my first job was in the warehouse goods receivable.
So I'd have to book in all the goods and take it around to the accountant
and then get it ready so that we could pair invoices and pay invoices
and all this sort of thing.
And I used to sit there every day.
And the head accountant was a fellow called Billy Brunt.
But Billy Brunt would come to work all day, the head accountant,
and he would sit in his office and he wouldn't move all day.
And at lunchtime, he'd open up a couple of sandwiches.
He made a home before he came to work or his wife had made for him.
And he'd eat his lunch at the desk and he'd sit there all day,
ticking and flicking with a red and green pen.
And I said, I don't want to be accountant.
So I went back after a couple of months.
I said to dad, I think I'll go to uni.
He said, all right, quit work and go to uni, which I did.
I had a couple of months off.
I was going to start university in March,
doing commerce law at the University of New South Wales.
And in February, I'm on a fishing trip with my mate
down the south coast of Batemans Bay.
And dad rings where I was staying, because I was staying with friends,
and says, I've got you a trial at the Penrith Panthers.
I said, what for? He said, rugby league.
He said, oh, well, I think you should play rugby league.
He said, you're pretty good at it.
He said, we didn't let you play last year.
I've got you a trial at the Penrith Panthers.
I said, why the Penrith Panthers?
Because in those days, I was a Parramatta junior,
but they were tied juniors who could play for either.
He said, I don't think you'd make the Parramatta team.
He said, they won the comp last year.
That was his reasoning.
But mum and dad had sort of come from our Penrith way.
Dad had grown up at Walesha, and mum had lived at Penrith
and some areas in the area.
So they had a bit of an attachment to the area.
So the secretary at the time was a fellow called Ron Workman.
He said, I've run Ron Workman, he said,
and there's a trial for you this weekend.
So I had to drive home from Batemans Bay to go to this trial.
And I hadn't played for 18 months when I get to the trial.
Great preparation.
Yeah, so the trial was on a Saturday.
It was about 100 degrees.
And I started off in the first trial of the day
in a long sleeve brown jersey, and out I went.
Anyway, they kept tacking me off in one trial
and putting me on in the next and put me on.
And I played in five trials.
Stinking hot day.
I couldn't move for a week.
So when the trials were over,
I jumped in the car and drove back to Batemans Bay
to resume the fishing trip.
That's how much thought you gave it.
Yeah, and on the Monday night, Dad rang.
He said, you made grade.
I said, what's that?
And he said, you've made the under 23s.
He said, you've got to be training Tuesday night.
Back down from Batemans Bay?
I had to drive back from Batemans Bay
to go to training Tuesday night.
Was that exciting, Gus, to get that call?
Well, yeah, I didn't really get what it meant.
I thought, well, how long will this last?
I'm like 18 and playing under 23 is a fair age gap.
I was playing virtually against men back in those days.
So I didn't play any of the junior rep football
or junior pathways football
because I didn't play football when I was 17.
I pulled out of all those sides.
So yeah, it was an awesome experience.
Penrith was a young club back in those days.
I'd only been in the competition about eight or nine years.
And they had some couple of English internationals
playing for them.
Mick Stevenson and Bill Asherst and Dave Topless
was playing with the club at the time.
So it was a great place to be.
Built lifelong friends out of it
and a lifelong attachment, obviously, to the Panthers.
And you've been in rugby league pretty much
from that time your dad got you the trial.
That's where it started and it hasn't stopped.
I keep waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder
and say it's over.
But no one has yet.
I tell people, I haven't planned a thing my whole life.
Nothing's been a plan.
The plan was not to go to uni and...
I went to work and decided I wasn't going to do that.
So I went to uni and I did well at uni
for the first couple of years.
But by 1978, so I went to uni in 76, 77
and I pretty much passed everything
the first couple of years.
And then by 1978, I'm playing first grade football
and I'm captain of the Panthers at 20 years of age
and training and playing at Penrith.
And I'm going to university at the University
of New South Wales at Randwick,
which is a long way from Penrith.
I'm working three or four nights a week
at Rydex Servicemen's Club on Victoria Road
behind the bar or on the door.
So no money for you to play as a Panther?
That's why you needed the other job or just not enough?
Well, no, it was not money.
But the first year I didn't even know you got paid.
So at the end of the year, I got a check for $370.
And I said, what's this?
I said, it's your match payments.
I think we were on $20 a win and $10 a loss
in the under 23s.
And I think it was $40 a win and $20 a loss
in the reserve grade.
And the first grade was like $200 a win and $40 a loss.
And I got one first grade game that year.
They sent me on a half time in the game.
So we lost, unfortunately, so I didn't get the $200.
But yeah, but at the end of the year,
they gave me a check for $370.
And I said, what's that for?
They said, it's you got match payments.
I said, I didn't know you got paid.
Yeah, I had no idea you got paid for it.
Yeah, well, it's just a bonus.
The second year when they went to pay me,
I owed them money because I went on the trip away.
And I dropped out of uni, always thought I'd go back to it.
But I dropped out of uni by 1978, 79.
Was that a tough decision?
I dropped out long before she found out.
She just wanted you to complete it.
Yeah, I was going to be an accountant or a lawyer
or something reputable, not a footballer.
Yeah, my mum's, she's never forgiven me, still tells me today.
Yeah, so but it's worked out all right.
It has worked out all right.
One thing that does sort of jump out when I think of your career
is leadership at quite a young age.
Why do you think people looked at you
and saw you as someone that could lead?
I was a school captain, pretty much captain of most teams
I think I probably got that from my father.
He was a policeman, obviously, as I've said before.
I don't know why it started.
But I guess once you're in that, it sort of just
works upon itself over a period of time.
And you learn confidence and you learn to be able to communicate
and you learn, not that you learn at all at a young age,
but sort of just over experience and a period of time.
It's just sort of become a part of what I did
or what I was recognised as or what people entrusted me
to do over a period of time, I guess.
Sometimes I've been good at it.
Sometimes I've been pretty poor at it.
But that's just life's experience, isn't it?
So you're a leader at a young age,
like you said, at 20 years of age at the Panthers.
But when you move from the Panthers,
is leadership a part of that discussion
when you eventually leave there?
I got recruited by Newtown, a bloke called Warren Ryan.
1978, at the end of the 1978 season, I had a bit of a setback.
I went half blind in my right eye,
and we sort of didn't know what it was.
And Dad took me to the eye hospital, Sydney Eye Hospital,
to go and get it checked out.
He was a bit worried about what it was.
And in the end, they found that I had a detached retina,
which back in those days was a pretty big injury.
And in fact, they'd gone all day
until they'd got a specialist in to actually look at it.
And your eyes are all dilated, you can't see anything, you know.
And he said, oh, we've found what it is.
It's a detached retina.
We can put you in tonight and fix that.
I said, oh, right, so what's that mean?
Oh, no, it's good. Your eyesight will be OK.
You'll just never be able to play sport again.
And I said, say what?
And he said, you'll just never be able to play sport again.
I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's, no, can't have that.
And then he's, well, no, that's what it is.
I said, well, no, let me out.
He said, well, you can't go anywhere. Your eyes are dilated.
He said, when we've booked you in, you can't, you can't leave.
And I said, well, I need a phone.
So I rang Dad, who was at the police academy
by this stage at Redfern. He was running the police academy.
So he came down in the police car and charged in
and arrested me and took me out.
And as luck would have it, he had a police partner
who had dealt with a matter where a young boy
had accidentally been shot in the eye with a bow and arrow
and injured his eye.
And they'd flown up this eye specialist from Canberra,
a bloke by the name of Leo Shanahan,
to treat this boy and get him right.
And we luckily got an appointment with this Leo Shanahan.
He was in town and we went to his,
I think he was in Annandale there somewhere.
And we went to his surgery and he had a look at it.
He said, yeah, you've detached your retina.
They've got that right.
He said, look, you know, the general thinking is
that you can't go back to contact sport,
but, you know, I'm doing a new wave of sort of surgeries
on this and I think that I can get that back on
and hopefully we can get you back playing
in the next six months, you know.
So I had six months out.
I started the 1979 season really well
and we played against New Down and Hanson Park.
I had a pretty good game that day.
And after the game, Warren Ryan come and saw me
and he said, how would you like to come and play
And I said, oh, you know, that'd be good.
No one had ever asked me to move to another team
because they were going to pay me money to do it.
I wasn't on much money at Penrith, you know.
I said, but, you know, I said, I love Penrith.
I don't know, I'll ever think about it.
Well, two weeks later, I did me eye again for a second time.
And they said, this time, that's it.
You definitely got to give it away.
So Leo Shanahan did the surgery again.
And he said, you know what?
He said, it was a different part of your eye.
He said, I'll give you one more shot.
He said, but you've got to have eight or nine months off.
So in the space of two years, I played very little football.
So sort of came back in 1980
and that was a pretty ordinary year.
And Warren Ryan rang again.
So I went to Newtown in 1981.
Not a bad year to go.
Yeah, well, that's where you go from being a boy to a man.
You go to play with some very, very strong men
and some great blokes and a different life,
living in the Western suburbs to moving into Newtown.
And I loved living in and around the city.
I've always wanted to be in and around the city
as much as I grew up in West.
And I love the Golden West,
but the city always excited me.
So yeah, Newtown was, as I say,
that's where you went from being a boy to a man,
you're playing with Tom Radonigus
and a lot of the big name players that they had at that time,
great blokes and we had a great year.
We went to a grand final.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
So you're up in Adam.
You are where you're meant to be.
So you have some success there at Newtown.
Leadership again, even amongst those type of blokes?
Or was it more of a learning experience for you?
Oh, it was a learning experience.
Like I drove Tom Radonigus to and from training every day.
I was still living at Warrington
for the first half of the season
and Tommy was living at Blacktown.
So I used to pick him up on the way through
and drop him home after training.
Did he give you petrol money or was it?
I learned how to drink, I know that.
And Ray Blacklock had come from Penrith with me.
Ray passed away a few years ago, sadly,
but Tommy's gone too.
A lot of their old blokes have sort of passed away recently.
But yeah, I was kind of like a kid amongst those blokes.
And even today, if I'm amongst them,
you still feel like a kid, like it's just, yeah.
You slot back into your position.
You slot back into your, yeah, you keep your place.
Yeah, they were men.
They were grown men, hard men too.
Yeah, and the best in the business, right?
Tommy was, you know,
playing for Australia and New South Wales.
It was a bit of a bits and pieces team.
You know, Warren had sort of cobbled it
from a lot of other sides
and we were all sort of came together at that time
and it was a great group of blokes.
We had an extraordinary year.
Poor old Newtown.
The grand final sent them broke.
They weren't broke the next year
and we all had to go and find other clubs.
That's how I ended up with the Bulldogs.
Yeah, and of course the Bulldogs, you know,
is where you are now in a different capacity,
but that's obviously a part of your heart
and where you had some success as well.
And I don't imagine, like in my head,
being a rooster supporter, you know,
thank God you and Freddie came to the Chooks.
It was a magical moment for us.
And the footy we played was awesome.
But in your heart, would it be Penriff,
Newtown and the Doggies?
It's hard to say.
It's like saying which child do you love the most?
Well, I could tell you right now.
It's a bit like tennis rankings.
You know, it changes.
It changes, yeah.
But believe me, I do rank them.
Yeah, I heard a saying once
that you're only as happy as your unhappiest child
and that's very, very true, so.
That is a really good quote, yeah.
Yeah, so the Bulldogs, I had six years there,
but the first couple of years I was at the Bulldogs
in 83, I was playing first grade and I fractured my neck.
I lost the use of my left arm for about eight or nine months.
And again, they said, that's it.
You can't go back to playing, but stupidly I did.
Went back in 84 and after 10 rounds
and I was going pretty good, I broke my ankle.
I was out for the rest of the season there.
So I'd kind of gone through a bad trot injury-wise
and it limited the amount of football that I played.
But thankfully the last couple of years were all right
and I was able to retire from playing
and luckily walk straight into this role as a coach.
Did you always know that that was gonna be?
Like you say, you don't plan for anything.
Didn't plan a thing.
Players I played with said,
you're always gonna be a coach.
They sort of had that appeal.
Did you believe them when they said it?
I had no aspirations of being a coach.
Did you look at the coach and go,
oh, actually, I don't fancy that or?
Oh, plenty of times, plenty of times.
There was plenty of times we were doing this
and if I was coaching, we wouldn't be doing this.
Honestly, I'd never planned anything.
Honestly, it just sort of bumbled along
from one thing to the next.
So when I left Canterbury at the end of 85,
we'd won two comps in a row, 84, 85.
You were the youngest coach to win a Premiership,
Yeah, I was at the time.
I don't know if that still stands.
A lot of old coaches winning stuff now
except, obviously, the five.
Well, they're lasting a lot longer those days.
Most of them are.
So at the end of 85, I went to Souths
and had a year at Souths, my last year at Souths.
And then Canterbury got me back
to coach the reserve grade next year.
And then out of nowhere,
you become the first-grade coach a year later.
It was just ridiculous.
So when the doggies come knocking,
or as my mum would say, the berries,
because she's a mad berry fan,
when the berries come knocking and you go,
yeah, give that a go,
or it's like, I've got nothing better to do,
so I'll give it a crank.
Yeah, like what happened was,
my year at Souths was quite telling
because George Piggins was always very kind publicly
about the contributions that I made there.
And it was a great young team.
We had a young Mario Fenick and Craig Coleman
and Ian Roberts and Les Davidson and David Boyle
and all these great young kids.
And I went there as a senior player
and helped George with the coaching of the team
and the football that we played.
Part of me coming back to Canterbury was Warren Ryan,
filthy that I was over at Souths working with them.
So the old chairman, Barry Nelson, rang up.
He was a mate of Dad's.
He said, why don't you give that footy away?
He said, you've had enough footy.
He said, come and coach our reserve grades.
I always thought you'd be a coach.
And at the time, I was working as a poker machine salesman.
Right, so playing on the weekends,
training a couple of times a week.
Yeah, my job was a poker machine salesman.
That's what I was.
Football was your second job.
That was your love, your passion,
but that was my second job.
It was the best second job in the world.
In those days, blokes worked on weekends
and did odd jobs or night jobs
and all that sort of thing to make some extra money.
Football was that.
We didn't earn much out of it,
but I was really lucky.
When I played my last year in 86,
I made my last payment on my first time at Greystone.
So out of all the bumps and bruises and injuries I got,
I owned my little house at Greystone.
$75,000 house at Greystone.
And so I had that.
And I was working and I didn't owe any money
and I thought I was the richest bloke in the world.
10 years later, I come to the Roosters
and I met the richest bloke in the world.
Somewhere in all of this, you fall in love.
You have a family.
Like, what was that like for you being?
Yeah, it didn't quite happen like that, Gus.
Tell us about it.
And when you first met your wife, was it really awesome?
My wife and I worked together.
She was the PA to our boss at the poker machine company.
And she used to type my reports.
So I used to do feasibility studies for clubs
and reports for clubs on how they should manage
their poker machine installation,
how many machines they should buy
and how they should pay them off
and what it'll do for their revenue and all that sort of thing.
So I had to write up these reports
and she typed them up and make them look nice
so I could go and present them to the clubs.
There was a lot of dummy ones in there
because I just had to go in and talk to her
and get her to do my typing, even though I wasn't going to do anything.
I used to throw them in the bin when I walked out.
You got half an hour.
Yeah, but we were sort of on and off for seven or eight years.
And then by 96, that's when we started living.
You wore her down eventually.
You wore her down.
It's frowned upon, but sometimes it works out.
So, yeah, we were in different lives.
I was playing football and coaching football and doing all that
and she was living her life,
but it kind of ended up marrying up in the end.
And how quickly did kids come into your world?
Yeah, so my first daughter was born in 97.
A couple of years later, my son,
and then three years after that, my youngest daughter, Abby.
My youngest daughter's Abby too.
Brooke, Jack and Abby.
Yeah, well, I got a Jack.
I got a Jack and an Abby.
You got an Ella in there too.
So Brooke's a lawyer.
She finished uni.
She did what I couldn't do.
Jack works full-time in rugby league at the Kermala Sharks.
He went through the junior rep system there and came out of that
and he now works there full-time in development
in the women's program.
And my other daughter's just doing her exams
in her third year of psychology, so she's doing well as well.
Well, your face lights up when you talk about the kids.
What's it like being...
I'd be dead without them.
I'd be dead without them, yeah.
I don't know where my life would have gone.
And I didn't plan it.
Again? Well, we know you're not a planner.
No, we didn't plan that.
Yeah, but that's how it happened.
Yeah, and we've been together ever since.
So I've known her since 1989 and we've been married since mid-'90s.
Coming up to your 35th year together.
Yeah, something like that.
She deserves the medal?
I don't know how she's put up with it.
How is it being a partner, do you think,
who's high profile like yourself,
who, you know, you're not afraid to say how you feel?
That can also put a little bit of a target on you.
Funnily enough, none of that ever gets into the home.
No-one ever sees that at home.
It's never, ever...
Like, when I go home, that's not there.
Yeah, it never has been.
It's never, ever come through the front door.
We don't read papers.
I used to come home and say,
Dad, you're on the news again tonight.
Dad, you're on the TV again tonight.
You know, all that sort of thing.
The kids didn't know what it was and they don't care.
And they know that I don't care about it.
So it's, you know...
It's never really entered their lives, to be honest.
What I do during the day when I leave the house
has got nothing to do with what I do when I come back home.
So it's kind of like, you know, it's not there.
It's a discipline, though, isn't it, to sort of park it?
Like, I know copper mans of mine who,
as they're driving home in that last kilometre,
as they're weaving through the last street
and they're parking up,
they're just going kind of decongress.
And they just go, right, I'm taking the uniform off now.
My dad was like that.
Like, Dad, as long as I can remember,
Dad left home at 6 o'clock every morning
and at 6.30 every night, the headlights come up the driveway.
He was home for dinner at 6.30 every night on the dot.
What he did in those 12 and a half hours, you know...
I learned later on, you know, what was happening out there.
But it never came home.
His work never came home.
And I'm pretty much the same.
You know, as the kids got older, particularly my son,
because he was playing football and he was in the system at Cronulla
there for a while, playing junior reps,
and he played with some very good players there.
They won a couple of competitions.
He kind of worked out at a younger age who I was
or what I was in the game of rugby league.
But it's never affected him, I wouldn't think.
And my daughters wouldn't know.
Honestly, if they do, they certainly don't talk about it.
Yeah, you're just Dad.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you're at the doggies.
You have some success there.
As I said, the youngest coach ever to win a Premiership.
I'm pretty much... I'm going to lock that in.
It's ridiculous, isn't it, when you think about it?
It's a pretty cool thing to have.
I mean, what was that like, being basically a boy coaching man
and having success like that?
Well, it was kind of like...
Like, I'd played with just about everyone that I coached.
And some of them were young players
when I was a senior player at the Bulldogs.
So your Langmax and your Farahs and your Alchins
and all these sort of...
They were young blokes that I played with at the Bulldogs
before I left to go to Souths,
and I played against them when I played Souths.
So I knew all those blokes,
and I played with, obviously, Terry Lams and Mortamans
and all those sort of blokes.
And Warren was a great coach.
I mean, he was there for 84, 85, or 687,
so he went to three grand finals and won a competition.
And that's what we just thought life was, you know?
Playing footy, playing hard, drink hard, train hard, play hard,
That was our life.
So when it got to 88, it was kind of just like a continuation.
You know, it didn't take much coaching until the end, obviously,
It was just a great year, and we went through and we won.
It was ridiculous.
Like, two years earlier, I'm playing with them,
and now I'm coaching them.
The hard part of that year was with Steve Mortimer's final year.
He broke his arm at the back end of the season.
He got on the field in the grand final,
but he still had a broken arm.
We played him the last couple of minutes.
Yeah, I remember.
The Mount Meninga sort of...
Yeah, the big cast on his arm.
Yeah, I remember.
And then from there, it just went on from there.
A couple of years later, I'm at Penrith,
and it all happened again.
And then after four years, my first four years,
I went to three grand finals and won two comps.
So someone thought I knew what I was doing
and gave me the Origin job.
And then the Origin took on a life of its own,
and that went really well.
And then Super League happened.
Super League was, without me knowing it,
was the pathway into media.
I became one of the spokesmen for the ARL
in that particular war.
Yeah, and that's how the media work started.
And I'm still doing it today.
With all that, and we're working through
because of time here, you get to the Super League war,
and you decide to go ARL.
Any thought going the other side?
Right, so you knew exactly where you stood.
That's why you're the spokesman.
And then from that, obviously, you know,
you move and you spend some time at the Roosters.
What was that like?
Well, I went to the Roosters before Super League,
so I was at the Roosters when Super League started.
Just backtrack a little bit on that.
We won the Premiership in Penrith in 1991,
and I think we'd have probably gone on
and won two or three more after that.
You and the Raiders were just the class above.
Yeah, we were the good sides,
but we were a good young side.
And the Raiders were a champion team
and regarded as one of the best ever.
They'd just beat us in one grand final.
We should have beaten them.
We beat them the next year.
Our boys were pretty good and only going to get better.
And we had the terrible tragedy of young Ben Alexander
losing his life in a car accident.
It destroyed our club.
It destroyed Greg.
It destroyed his family.
You know, it was a terrible time for everyone.
And it took us...
Well, we still haven't recovered,
but it took years for the club to recover.
By 1994, football-wise, we were sort of back on track again.
But I'd had enough.
I was going to retire from coaching.
I was going to go back to poker machines.
Yeah, so that was what I intended to do.
And it was at that time, the middle of 1994,
my manager got a call from the Roosters,
which I said, no, I didn't want to go to the Roosters.
Why didn't you want to go to the Roosters initially?
Oh, so it wasn't the club.
It was just, I'm out of footy.
The Roosters were struggling at the time,
but I'd never had any affiliation with the Roosters.
I'd never had any history with the Roosters.
They were a champion side back in the 70s
when Beto and those were playing with them.
But I'd never sort of known them.
And I said, no, no, I'm going to retire.
And I, in fact, told Panthers, you know,
this will be my last year.
And then we made the decision that Roy Simmons
was working for us in the club there.
We'd get Roy coaching them straight away.
So I sort of left with about six or eight weeks to go
in the competition.
And then, you know, through a number of connections
and then I ended up meeting Nick Politis
and went to lunch with him and we shook hands
and decided to coach the Roosters.
I never ever signed a contract with the Roosters.
It was always a handshake with Nick, you know.
And it was funny.
In 1994, Arthur Beecham was the caretaker coach.
They'd sacked, I think, Mark Murray earlier in the year,
and Beecham was the caretaker coach.
So I'm going to coach them in 95.
So for the back part of 1994, I'm coming to training
and watching them train and I'm going to the games
to see how they get on and all that.
So we go to the second last game.
We go out to Parramatta and they get beat 44-4
or something or other.
And Beecham walks in after the game.
There's only one game to go.
And I'm in the dressing room.
Nick turned around and he said,
you're coaching next week, baby.
He said, you're coaching next week.
We haven't got a coach.
So I started in the last round of 1994.
How'd you go, first game?
We beat the Gold Coast in the last game of the season.
It was a funny day.
Yeah, it was a good day.
Yeah, I loved it.
What's Nick Pilatus like?
Next to my father, probably the greatest man I ever met.
I love the fact that you just shook hands,
looked at each other in the eye and just worked it out.
I had no intention of going.
I had no intention of coaching.
So you turned up at the lunch thinking,
this will be a nice lunch.
I'll meet a nice person and I'll leave.
Yeah, I heard about it.
And what, three hours later you were signed on.
Well, handshaked on.
There's some funny stories about that day,
which I probably can't tell, but...
It was funny because I went down to meet him.
He was in William Street there, City Ford.
City Ford, yes, yes, yes, you know.
City Ford says, yes, more rough.
So I go down to meet Nick and I go down.
And I just picked up that day a brand new Holden Statesman
from Holden at Penrith, who are our sponsors out there.
A brand new Holden Statesman.
And the reason I bought it was because there was a promotion on
that you got a new set of Cobra Golf Clubs,
Greg Norman Cobra Golf Clubs.
So I bought the Statesman...
To get the free clubs.
To get the free clubs.
And I turned up in this Statesman.
I parked at the City Ford and we went down the road
to Nick's favourite lunch place and we sat there and had a talk
and he told me what he wanted to do for the club.
He'd just taken over as chairman in recent times
and they were sort of struggling and struggling to buy players,
et cetera, et cetera.
And we had a good talk and he was...
Well, I loved him from the first moment, you know.
So we shook hands at the table and we walked back
and I had to get back to Penrith that night, you know.
So I'm sitting there and my car's not there.
I said, Nick, where's my car?
He said, I don't know.
They must have parked it downstairs.
So anyway, we're sitting in the office
and there's people running around everywhere and I said,
Nick, where's this car?
He said, they're looking for it.
They're looking for it.
And I said, I don't know.
I'm waiting and waiting and waiting.
And he said, your car's gone, baby.
He said, we can't find it.
He said, you'll have to drive this one
and up comes this brand new Ford LT.
And he says, you're going to have to drive it.
And it's got, yes, yes, number plates on it.
The hold is toast.
I said, me new golf clubs are in the back of that car.
He looked at me with a shock.
Look, I didn't get the golf clubs back.
Oh, you never got the clubs.
He said, we'll have to get you some new rackets, baby.
That's a great story.
So your time at the Roosters is also bringing a couple of Panthers with you.
You bring, obviously, Freddie who ends up being a legend.
That doesn't happen without the Super League.
It happened straight away because of the Super League War.
It may have happened in time after time.
But yeah, the opportunity to get them came about
because of the Super League War, because when I was working for the ARL
and running around signing players up to the ARL,
I'd naturally gone out and signed a heap of Penrith players
because I knew them to stick with the ARL and potential rep stars.
And Brad Fittler was obviously one of them.
And Matt Singh was one of them.
I'd sort of known them since they were teenagers.
And then, for some reason, at the time,
Penrith went and signed up with Super League.
Now, I know why they did it.
I know who did it.
So the club was with Super League.
But I'd signed all their players to the ARL.
And that opened the way then through a court process
to extract Brad Fittler and Matt Singh
and bring them to the Roosters, which was huge for us.
I think we ran...
I think in 94 they ran second last or last in first grade and reserve grade.
The next year we were beaten on percentages to make the top eight in 95.
And then Brad came in 96.
And they've kind of been in the top four ever since.
So it's been quite extraordinary.
Yeah, unbelievable.
I've still got the face mask from Freddie's last game.
And every now and again, because I go out with Freddie now to the bush
and do the mental fitness stuff.
I sometimes wear it out there.
And you're just like, mate, what have you still got that for?
Freddie's last game, we got all the kids.
Ricky Stewart was coaching the team.
Our assistant coaches were John Cartwright, Dean Pay, Shane Flanagan
and Ivan Cleary were our assistant coaches.
And we'd all had kids and they were all about the same age.
So our kids were a guard of honour for Freddie's last game.
Was that the one at the Sydney Football Stadium against Parramatta?
And in that is Nathan Cleary and Jed Cartwright and Ricky Stewart.
So all our boys, Kyle Flanagan, all our boys are in that photo
on Freddie's last day heading out for that game.
It's extraordinary.
Pump Parramatta, I remember that day.
It was one of the great days.
We all had our cardboard cards.
Should have won the comp.
Should have won the comp.
Should have won the comp.
In 2004, we won the under-20s, the Jersey Fleet.
We won the reserve grade.
And we were beaten three points in the first grade.
Could have been one of the greatest years of all time.
Basically, 2000, 2002, 2004, those four comps, we won one.
And I can understand losing the Broncos in 2000,
but it really upset me, 2003.
Yeah, out of nowhere a poured raining.
And then 2004, they held up.
How long are you going to be held up for before the try is given?
He's still being held up today.
He still hasn't got it down.
He still hasn't got it down.
I spoke to Bill Harrigan.
I spoke to someone else about that ages ago.
I did a do with him for his charity not so long ago.
He said, Gus, I've won three comps.
Three different teams, all against the Roosters.
I said, mate, I'm never doing nothing for you ever again.
So, Gussie, we haven't got a lot of time.
So, you know, you turn into the super coach,
and I know you don't like that term, but that's the way it is.
You've got media.
Your life is rugby league.
I feel, you know, being with Matty and MG for 10 years
on the grill team on Triple M, now with Wendell Saylor,
being around rugby league players,
it's just a story that continually gives you off-season, on-season,
There seems to be this tribalism
that no one's just happy to be just calm in the middle.
You're either into something or you're against something.
Does that take its toll on you,
being someone who's sort of the centre of that stuff?
The game that keeps on giving.
I tell people, it's a different planet today
to what it was back in the 70s and 80s when I played, you know?
And I've sort of... I've lived it.
I mean, I walked into Penrith looking for a game of football in 1976,
as I said, and I've been in professional rugby league ever since
in some capacity and virtually in all capacities.
Media, playing, coaching, administration, all levels of the game,
I've been involved with it in all that time,
and I've seen the transitions from one era to the next and to the next,
and I've watched the different demographic of our game change,
the personality of our players change,
you know, society's changed in that time as well.
Things are very different today to what they were,
different to what they were 10 years ago.
I mean, it changes so fast.
It's a completely different planet.
I mean, in the football, you can see the embryo
of what we were playing back all those years ago,
but to compare life today with what it was back then,
even in football, is completely different.
The life that they live today now as footballers,
and first of all, the full-time professionalism,
the training and everything they need to go through,
but the scrutiny that's on it, the pressure that's on it,
the demographic of our game now,
which is more than 50% Pacific Island and Polynesian players,
with that has brought a number of different things to our game,
all positive things, but it's certainly changed
the demographic of our game and changed the way it's coached,
but there is something innate in the NRL football
that's common to all of them,
and to play this game, to do what we do, to do what they do,
to put themselves through what they do,
the absolute inner toughness and drive and persevere.
In different levels, there are different levels of toughness
and different types of toughness,
but there is this one innate quality that they've all got.
You're talking about the NRL player who is incredible,
even if they only ever played one game.
I don't know if you've ever heard the stats,
but there have been about 9,500 first-grade footballers
since the beginning of time.
Nine and a half thousand. I would have thought there were more.
Something like 1,400 played one game,
and over 6,500 played less than 50 first-grade games.
So if you played 100 first-grade games,
you're like in the top 12% of anyone who's played NRL,
let alone the ones that first pulled on a boot.
The percentage chance of a kid playing in the park
becoming an NRL footballer is so minute, so small,
even when you get into the pathways programs
and the junior rep programs, the percentages are so small
of the bloke that's going on to be the NRL player
than to be a really good long-term NRL player.
Then there's that other level, that great, legendary NRL player.
Immortal, which is such a small, small percentage.
It's nearly generational, but we seem to be able to produce them.
But amongst them all, and you've met them all,
say Johns and Geyer and Wasala,
you've got three blokes that are very different
but very much the same, and you can see it in them.
There is an innate commonality about their drive
and their toughness and risk-taking.
Our game is risk-taking.
It's physically demanding. It's emotionally demanding.
It challenges your courage and your commitment.
It challenges everything about you,
and that's just the moments that you see.
That's not the quiet moments when you're on your own.
So yeah, they've all got that.
That's the thing that's hard to explain
and that's the thing you see in a young footballer
when you go out to scout or you're watching kids
or you're trying to make a decision
as to whether this kid might make it or that kid won't make it.
I'm pretty good at telling you who won't make it.
There are much better people than me that can tell me
what a kid at 17 or 18 is going to look like when he's 23 or 24.
I won't say that I've got that talent.
I can say the one that's not going to make it.
But that competitive streak, that competitive hardness,
I call it risk-taking.
It's not really risk-taking, but it's kind of like they're scared,
but they'll do it anyway.
They won't admit to being scared.
They'll do it over and over and over again.
And they'll do it knowing how much it's going to hurt.
And that's the commonality through all generations.
They all had that. They've all got that.
And it's the one thing I think that even today I still look for in a kid
when I'm watching him and I look at his body language
at those moments, either at training or in play, where you go, yep,
and he's just got that competitive hardness.
And they all deal with it in different ways.
They all deal with the pressure in different ways and all that.
But in the footballers that you've met, you can probably,
and I see you nodding there, you can probably understand,
you can see it in them.
Definitely. X-Factors.
I see it in cricketers. I see it in AFL players. I see it.
The really good ones have just got that something special.
I don't know what we call it, and no one knows what it is,
but kind of when you see it and you feel it, you know what it is.
Well, you'll be too modest to think this, but you've got it.
And you've done it in all different parts of the game.
Our Fast Five questions is how we finish our podcast.
Have you got a favourite quote that you live your life by
or did you hear it one day and went, oh, yep, that makes sense?
My dad's favourite quote to me was always,
never let mugs upset you.
And that's served me well.
I bet you it has.
So I'll give Dad the credit for that one.
Good on you. Well, you've already called him your hero too, right?
Favourite holiday destination, anywhere in particular?
Been going there for 40 years.
Okay. You got a place up there now or...?
I stay at the Sheraton Mirage every time I go up there.
I was actually dating a girl back in the 80s,
and she was from a very wealthy family,
and they spent Christmas at the Sheraton Mirage.
This is back in the early days when it was like...
And I thought I couldn't imagine ever being able
to afford to come here and have a holiday.
So I made myself save up and go there every year.
Sometimes I didn't even have the money.
I was broke, but I still made myself go,
and I'd have to find it somehow.
And then we've been going there as a family ever since.
We go every year.
That's a nice story.
Are you a reader? You got a favourite book?
I read sporting books and I read crime novels.
Any particular one that you...
John Grisham, I like.
Oh, yeah. He's good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, you can't handle the truth.
Can't handle the truth.
How good's that court say?
What was the moral of that, of A Few Good Men?
What was the moral?
Because I remember this was part of a team talk
back in Origin back in the day.
The whole movie or just that particular...
No, there was just a theme...
When we used to go into camp back in the early 90s,
we would have a...
They'd have a common movie
that they were always playing on the bus
or would be on in the thing,
and it might be a comedy movie,
it might be something else.
And A Few Good Men was the movie of the day
and they were all watching this movie
and it was all, you can't handle the truth
and you can't handle it, you can't handle the truth.
And I knew all the players had watched it
and I said, what's the moral of the story,
You can't handle the truth.
They couldn't find those two men guilty of murder
because they had followed an order.
They had been given an order
and they followed the order.
And the reason with the US Marines
is why they want people like that
is because they've got to stand on a wall
and they're the ones we want to protect us.
We don't want people that will be afraid
or turn at the first bullet.
And I kind of then married that into,
that's what we look for in an Origin player.
And I've just described to you the things
that I look for in a footballer.
And it was kind of like, you know,
even the court would realise that that's the men
that we want to train and protect our country.
That's why she says in the movie,
he says, why do you like them so much?
He said, because they stand on a wall
and say, no one's going to hurt you tonight,
And that became the theme of our Origin team,
that we would stand on a wall
and no one was going to beat us tonight,
not on our watch.
And that was the type of people
that we wanted in an Origin team.
I just don't pick the best players or the most talented.
I pick the people that I think can stand on a wall
and say, not on my watch.
And that became the theme of that Origin series
Oh, that's awesome.
You know, and it was kind of like,
so that's my favourite movie for that reason.
It was a great movie,
but it was so much a part of our Origin theme that year.
Years later, many years later,
and I'd often talk about, you know,
those sorts of stories with the Origin players.
Years later, when I come back to do Origin the second time,
we're out in Sydney,
I took the staff out for dinner in the city
and we're at, we might have been at Star Casino.
I don't know where we were or anything.
Laurie Daly comes up to me all excited
because he's met these US Marines.
There are these US Marines that are in Sydney.
They're on their way back from Kuwait or somewhere.
And he's met these blokes.
So we go out and we have a drink with them.
And we're with the leader, the general,
and we're with these blokes
who have just come back from overseas.
They came into camp the next night
and told us about their experience
over there in the Middle East
and what their code was, what their ethos was.
And they spoke about some of the things
they'd just been through in that time.
They were on their way back through Australia
on sort of furlough on their way back to America.
They came in and spoke to that team that night,
the night before the game,
which was for Laurie who'd been through it,
you know, what we'd been through in the early nights.
This was huge, you know, and it was great for us.
And we won that night.
We invited them to the game.
They came out to Homebush and sat on the side.
People didn't know who they were.
We got these blokes on the sideline there.
I'd got them passes and everything.
They stood behind us.
They were standing with us on the sidelines
to watch the game.
They were US Marines.
Thought they were competition winners.
Yeah, they were US...
Thought they were corporates who sponsored
to get a trip on the field, yeah.
They were US Marines, you know, and it was...
And again, it became part of our series,
dealing with those people.
Not that I ever wanted to compare war to football,
but there were themes in it that can galvanise
and, you know, and that's why I want to talk about
these special people that they are, our players, you know,
and there were things...
So, yeah, A Few Good Men is my favourite movie.
I love it. It's a great story.
And favourite charity.
So, Sean Partners, who are supporting us on the podcast,
have been a great supporter of my foundation,
They're giving every guest $10,000
to give to a charity of your choice.
And that $10,000, where would you like it to go?
And what do you think the people
that you're giving it to will do with that $10,000?
Well, the charity that's very close to us at Channel 9
is the Mark Hughes Foundation for Brain Cancer.
Yeah, so, yeah, Mark Hughes Foundation.
If you can be so kind, that'd be nice.
That's of course.
I'll let him know when we finish up here.
I'll send him a text that...
..you've just slotted 10 grand in his account.
And we know what they're doing, of course, is...
..coming up with, you know, a cure.
And the more money that goes there, the better.
Gus Gould, thank you so much for joining us today.
Where's your Gus Wallen?
Gus decided to give his money to the Mark Hughes Foundation,
a foundation that all of us here at the podcast
are right behind, Mark Hughes and his team.
Coming up next week's going to be another wonderful guest.
If you're listening to this but you want to see the podcast,
we have our own YouTube channel.
The details are in the show notes.
Look forward to seeing you next week.