Chris Fagan

And he knew that was my battle.

And his text messages were often about that battle and that I could win it.

And...

I got a great text from him after we won the premiership, the second premiership last year, sort of saying to me, I reckon you can move past that now, mate.

And it's just like he just was always thoughtful, you know.

The text would arrive out of the blue and it was usually when, from a footy perspective, things might have been not going all that well.

There were some challenges and there he was, you know, that sort of thing.

that voice um trying to get me back on track so uh uh very kind man and and uh uh yeah i just been a massive influence on me and you know i wouldn't i just look at it and go well i would be doing what i'm doing now if he hadn't shown faith in me to give me a job we'd never met before he gave me the job and from that day forward always tried to help me get better and improve and um

right till the end he was doing that.

Yeah, my, um, well, when I went to the interview, which is the first time I'd ever met Neil, um,

He came across as a very intense and scary man, to be honest.

And I was feeling reasonably intimidated anyway.

But he's sort of getting used to it.

But when you haven't met him before, he was very sort of blunt.

Probably not so much in recent years.

With his illness, it probably changed a bit.

But when he was a fearsome competitor and a coach, he was quite blunt and honest.

And it was a little bit hard to get used to his style.

So, yeah, I felt...

Quite intimidated in that initial meeting.