Chapter 1: Who is Phil 'Gus' Gould and what are his contributions to rugby league?
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Big dogs, big guests. Big dogs. Big dogs. You already know who it is. You know who it is. It's Phil Gould, right? It's Phil Gould.
Yeah.
White Wild. You know, one of the great rugby league coaches, one of the great rugby league minds, one of the great rugby league analysts, Channel 9 commentator. Big dog. That's who he is. Administrator at the doggies.
Yep.
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Chapter 2: What insights does Gus Gould share about the Anzac Round in rugby league?
How many more times can you do it?
I think when you were in Perth, you were saying to us that you used to just ride them on the way to the ground.
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much.
And then just do them one take. Well, you're alive.
You're alive. That's right. It was live. Crazy.
Are there nerves in that?
just we'll start as well we were there we were there we were there one year and um we're at sydney football stadium and uh so that had me down under the goal post and they used to have that rolling camera go past you know the camera and all that so that was good stuff i was sprinkling rain and tony charmers was our sort of production bloke on the ground you know he's standing there with an umbrella over the top of me and it's starting to rain a little bit heavier you know and he's
He's keeping the rain off me. He's keeping the rain off me. He said, mate, they're going to come to you in 30 seconds. In 30 seconds, they're going to come to you. I said, righto. He said, are you ready to go? I said, I'm ready to go. He said, that's good, yeah. He said, right, you're on. I said, good. So off he goes.
And as he does that, someone asks Peter Sterling a question, and Sterling gives a three-minute fucking answer. And the rain got fucking heavy. And he's standing there with the umbrella and he doesn't know what to do. I'm a fucking drowned rat. She's live.
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Chapter 3: How has coaching in rugby league evolved over the years?
Our friends. Swish, swish. There's ones where like people pay you and you send them like... Oh, this is just somebody going, hey, can you... Somebody, you know, like... Rip a Bucks rev up for us.
I think Riverview Rugby, they had their big games against their private schools in the rugby and then they get you to come to it. Against Joey's or something like that. A lot of people send me tapes of them doing the last word. Oh yeah. I bet. I bet.
Well, even when we were doing it with you over there, we were like, this is just, it feels sacrilegious to even try. It was like just trying to give us one word centered, like, you know, to the sentences to try.
Well, we wouldn't have done it if you weren't in it, even if it was for the briefest of moments.
It doesn't, it doesn't work at all. Um, you, obviously you're still part of the commentary team now, but there, and it's, and you know, channel nine's broadcast is, is fantastic. And there's so many like great, uh, like former players and people in the game, but there was like quite a golden period there.
Probably for people our age, of, you know, yourself, Rabs, Sterlo, Fatty, and like some of the interplay that like you and Rabs would have in commentary. Were they like really fun times?
Oh, absolutely. I've known Rabs. 40 years. I've known him way back in my playing days. We became mates through horse racing more than football. He just happened to be a football commentator and I was playing football, but we knew each other from horse racing. We both had a passion for that. But yeah, I mean, you know, Fatty, Sterlo and Rabs have all retired. My time will come very, very shortly.
And they were great days, particularly with Rabs. And I say to people, how often can you say in your life you worked with the absolute best of all time? Ray was like that. Fatty and Sterlo were the original. They were the best.
extraordinary the work that they did you look through the 90s and that with the footy show and the iconic show that it became and they did wonderful things for Rugby League Channel 9 has sold Rugby League to be a game sometimes better than it is they do a phenomenal job there and all the back people I mean you might have met them or not but all our production crews and all our young people that have been there for a long time and do such amazing work all the pre-tape and all the getting a broadcast to air they're phenomenal people they really are
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Chapter 4: What impact does social media have on modern athletes?
Great admiration. I spoke to Wayne about it a few years ago and he, I said, how long are you going to keep going? He said, well, I don't play golf. I don't go to the pub. He said, I'm not going to play bowls. He said, I've got no other. He said, and it keeps me young. Like he still trains and he still gets out and he loves being around the young fellas. He said, this is what I love doing.
And that's what I'm going to do. You know what I mean? I don't, I don't ever want to retire from work. No. You know, like whatever that work is, whether it's in the media or football or what have you, I think I always want to work. I don't, I don't want to sort of be retired doing anything, but, um, Yeah, and Craig, you know, longevity, those fellas have done an extraordinary job.
You've got to be winning to do it. Yeah. There's too much pressure on the losing side of it, but they've done extraordinary jobs.
And what about the side of coaching? Because you're obviously young when you started, but when you look at someone like Wayne particularly, where it's like you have to be able to connect with just so many different generations. Oh, absolutely.
Not that I've spoken a lot to Wayne over the years. I mean, we've been in the game together a long time, but he lived in Brisbane and I lived in Sydney, and we never sort of spoke that often. Only through media opportunities and interviews, we might have a lunch together every now and then.
Yeah.
We've talked about the different generations, just dealing with kids from different age groups and different generations, and it's very, very different today to what it was when we started 30, 40 years ago in the way that you communicate, the way you talk, their obligations, the amount of money they're earning, full-time athletes as against part-time athletes.
It's a very, very different ā I would say that our game ā only in the last decade has come to terms with full-time professionalism, even though since the mid-'90s there was enough money for you not to work just to do football. But as sporting organisations, we've only really just come to terms with it in the last decade.
What does that mean, coming to terms with it?
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Chapter 5: How is AI being integrated into rugby league coaching and analysis?
We had Freddie in here the other day, and he was telling us about how there was a period in his life where he was sleeping on your couch. I imagine you wouldn't see that in today's game either. What was the experience like?
Well, he was a great education to me. I mean, I learned more from Freddie than anything because when I first met Freddie, he was 18 years of age. He was Brad Fittler back then. He wasn't Freddie. He was, yeah, and what he's done with his life in that time has been incredible.
The man he is today and what he does in the game, not just his media stuff, but everything else he does in the game is a credit to him. And that's what rugby league can do. I mean, Freddie came from very humble beginnings. He was a great talent, obviously, but he learned to be a really great professional footballer. He learned to be a great leader.
And then he's morphed that into a career post-football I put that a lot down to the fact that we're able to get him to the eastern suburbs and be involved with some really incredible people that have helped with his development over a long period of time as a man. Yep. And he's a credit to himself. Yeah.
I could go back and tell stories about the 18-year-old Brad Fittler, but it's such a long, long way away from what he's developed into today. He's a father and family man and the work he does for charities and all that sort of thing. And his media work has been outstanding.
Well, he sort of went into some of those stories himself anyway. Did he? About the six-person jacuzzi he had in his bedroom in the house.
With one of his early contracts, we bought him a house in Glenmore Park. That's what he wanted to do. He over-capitalised it to the hell. It was just how everything opens and shuts. He had to leave that behind. Something of a party house.
Pons and Dribblers, this episode brought to you by our good friends at Ned's. Oh, Ned's, what would we do without you, mate? What would we do without you, Neds? What would we do without you? What would we do without you, Neds?
What would we do without you? We're doing a live show at Magic Round on the Friday. More details to come.
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Chapter 6: What role does mental health play in the lives of rugby league players?
They're highly talented athletes. To pull them together to take on this Queensland thing, which when I first started Origin in 92, Queensland were extremely dominant and New South Wales had sort of not come to terms with what I thought it took to win Origin games. So all of that was...
was deliberate on my part to make origin football different or to try and build a DNA into the New South Wales program that would somehow match what this Queensland spirit thing had created through the 80s. And thank God they did. I mean, I say... Rugby League wouldn't be what it is today without Queensland and Origin in the 80s.
I think it totally transformed our game completely as a broadcast product, as a popularity in sport in Australia. Our game owes a lot of gratitude to the Wally Lewises and Arthur Beatsons and those fellas in the 80s. And what it inspired us to do as New South Wales people. Sorry.
Some water there as well if you need it.
You're right. So, yeah, so that's, you know, and I think too it's important to note, you know, when we're talking about Anzac days and motivating footballers, people get the wrong impression a little bit when we talk about the military and different things like that regarding football. It's not thinking that we're anything like them, that we're anything like soldiers and it's anything like war.
In fact, it's the complete opposite. It's more like, look what they have to endure and what they are. It's kind of a part of that building that camaraderie and that courage. You need to go into these games without fear or hesitation or worrying about consequences. No one's going to die here. Our consequences are not life and death. It's a game of football.
This is a game, and we should be really excited about what we're going to do. It's a story I tell often.
with footballers particularly young footballers because they do go through a lot of personal anxiety and a personal stress and the pressure can get to them it gets to their families and their families put pressure on them and that sort of thing and you know when you're sort of relating things like Anzac Day or things like you know wars and that sort of thing to sport one of the stories I do tell particularly to young sports people and I might tell it pretty regularly at least once a year I'll sit down with a young group of footballers and
tell them about my experience in Papua New Guinea where I went to the Bamana War Cemetery up there. And if you've never been there, it's a beautifully kept war cemetery up there where all our fallen soldiers from the Kokoda Trail and conflicts that we had up in that area have been.
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Chapter 7: How does Gus Gould reflect on his career and the changes in rugby league?
There's an energy in the air.
What I like about it is that we really respect, you know, what Anzac means and what the Anzacs mean to us. And we don't trivialize it into some sort of, you know, celebration occasion just for rugby league. It's rugby league.
playing its part in the national celebration of this very important day and everything that those people went through i mean i never had to go to war in my life and that's because of these people and what then they gave their lives two years ago um my father did national service his brothers went to war the second world war um but our generations never had to do that and generations they wouldn't even understand i guess what what they went through back in that time you know and that's why
The PNG War Cemetery really struck me with those kids and the young Australians who went away and gave their lives. We're the ages of our young footballers today. That was their life then. This is our life now and we should be really grateful for that.
And to your point, even similarly to the way you characterised it during Origin, the Anzac Round, it doesn't compare rugby league to war. It's very much... It's very opposite, actually.
It's actually the opposite. It's not that we're trying to inspire or motivate people with war stories. It's to say, you know, we've got nothing to fear. Look at our life now compared to what these people had to endure back then and we should be grateful for what we do and We should attack this without fear and without hesitation. And we're all coming home after this. No one's going to die here.
Where these other people went and gave their lives.
It seems like from the outside anyway, but a lot of the way that you approach, not necessarily coaching, but dealing with the young footballers is from the mental side of things. I know you're a big golf fan. Did you watch much of the Masters? Every shot. Every shot.
When did you sleep? I watch golf from all over the world every week.
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Chapter 8: What are Gus Gould's thoughts on the future of rugby league and technology?
I imagine there's like... You see, like, rugby league, elite rugby league minds just sort of, like, chatting rugby league. That's obviously one of our favourite things as fans is to see it when it happens in a media sense. But, like, is there any particular minds that you ā Not so much. Yeah.
Not so much. I've kind of kept to myself with all of that over the years and even over the years. You know, there are some players that are real students of the game that you enjoy talking to and ā I guess in the evolution of coaches and coaching over the period of time, there's always been those people that have really taken it serious.
I mean, the coach that we've got at the Bulldogs at the moment, Cameron Serraldo, has been on a 10 or 12-year journey of personal development in so many different ways, not just around football, but professional sports, leadership, communication, presentation, and all that sort of thing. He's been quite remarkable. And that's the modern-day professional coach. That's...
and he's been going to be a career coach from the time he gave up playing, and he will be forever. That's why you talk about longevity in these things. I think they're all wired the same way, and it's why they have success over a long, long period of time. It's more than just the X's and O's of how to put on a play or make a tackle.
It's everything else that you've got to have into it that makes you the professional football coach that can actually help a program, help your other staff, help your other coaches. Manage your staff, manage your coaches, manage the media, manage the board, manage the sponsors, manage everyone else who wants a piece of you. They're really difficult jobs these days.
It's not the X's and O's that beat them.
Do you switch off at the end of the day? No. I know you can't.
No. If I call a game, I don't go home and sleep. If I go and watch a game, I don't go home and sleep.
What are you doing?
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