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The Live Sport Bible is here!Hart: Cleary could’ve been Warriors’ decade-long answer
Sport Nation • May 14th, 2026 10:52 am
Ivan Cleary & John Hart | Photo: Photosport
The rugby league world collectively raised its eyebrows on Wednesday, as arguably the greatest coach in NRL history announced he's stepping away from the game.
Four-time Premiership winner Ivan Cleary confirmed next year would be his last with the club, with no plans to seek an extension on his current deal.
One man instrumental in Cleary's early development was John Hart, who gave him his first job as a head coach when he joined the Warriors back in 2006.
At the time, Hart was the Warriors' executive director of football. He's been by Cleary's side ever since and has clearly made an enormous impression on the former All Blacks coach.
"He's probably the best all-round coach that I've ever been associated with in any code," Hart told Sport Nation's Scotty & Izzy.
"I had the pleasure of working with him, actually recruited and introduced him to the Warriors way back in the early 2000s and have followed his career and mentored him ever since.
"He is just a fantastic individual. He is an outstanding coach, outstanding manager of people and he is an outstanding person.
"He's a very, very, very rounded, grounded person."
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Cleary, 55, has clarified he will not be seeking another first-grade head coaching role, planning to remain with the Panthers as a part-time consultant.
Reflecting on what has made Cleary - the first coach to win three consecutive NRL Premierships - so effective at his job, Hart notes the foundation is in the Australian's even-keeled temperament through both calm and stormy waters.
"I think his evenness and the fact that he rides highs and lows," explained Hart.
"He's got a fantastic personality. He doesn't change in the sense that he handles failure and success the same way and very few people can do that.
"I've always seen him as someone that could be a coach with a team for 15 years. He's someone that is so stable, so even and has such a good demeanour about him that I believe that he's got special qualities."
And Hart still admits to an underlying feeling of regret over Cleary's parting of ways with the Warriors Cleary, where the sense of 'the one who got away' clearly remains tough to shake.
Having helped guide the NZ club to their first NRL Grand Final as a player in 2002, he repeated that feat as a coach in 2011 in his final year in Auckland before heading back across the Tasman.
It's a Kiwi connection that runs deep for Cleary, who finished with 53 appearances as a player for the Warriors and 154 as a coach. Additionally, son Jett Cleary, who was born in Auckland, is in the midst of a three-year deal at Mt Smart.
"The sorry thing to me is I look back and I think he could have been at the Warriors for 10 years.
"If I look at where he was at the time he left and what he could've bought, who knows what he could have done.
"He's that sort of person. He's very committed and you're seeing that in the way he's handling himself.
"I watched his media conference yesterday, it's not about him. It's never about him, it's about team, it is about culture and he sees himself just as part of the woodwork, not the frame."
Listen to the full interview below:
