Phil 'Gus' Gould

There's always got to be a plan B. They've always got to have another...

something else at the string of their bow, and it's up to us football clubs to do it.

We've become hospitals and schools and educations and welfare areas and everything but a football club.

Football's a part of what we do.

Could you have ever predicted it would get to where it's got?

I'd hoped for it.

I'd honestly hoped for it because...

In my football coaching days, Penrith, back in the early 90s, were kind enough to take me to America and I went across to a number of NFL clubs across there.

I went to LA Rams, San Francisco 49ers, Phoenix Suns Basketball, UCLA College and sort of kept contact with people across there.

Back then in the early 90s, looking at them, looking at the money they were earning, but the money they were spending on their program, the facilities that they had, the expertise in what they were doing,

The games were only mildly similar back then, but you sort of looked at it and thought, well, that's what professional sport looks like, which was very, very different to what we had here in Australia.

And personally, it was the motivation for what we eventually built at Penrith with the Centre of Excellence and the facilities that have been out there.

So it was kind of like a wish list.

You know, like, gee whiz, wonder if you'd been involved in the NFL.

Would rugby league ever look like that?

You know, I can remember back...

And even the money side of it, I mean, back in 1992, 1993 when I was there, college coaches, I mean, college coaches were on about 800,000 US a year, right?

College coaches.

Well, no, there aren't millions.

Yeah, like there was obscene players, you know, and you're thinking, well, not in your wildest dreams would you ever think rugby league would get to that level.