Word: coached
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...life-changing trip to the U.S. almost 40 years ago. In his physical prime, Gibson, who died May 9 in Sydney after a long struggle with dementia, was a good player, rugged and brave. But that's not how he'll be remembered. He is recognized as the finest coach in the history of rugby league in Australia. Winner of five premierships between 1974 and 1983, he was last month named Coach of the Century by a panel of experts that chose a greatest-ever Australian team to mark rugby league's centenary year. Said Wayne Bennett, the closest thing...
...Honolulu, the Australian interloper met Chuck Knox, who was in charge of the Los Angeles Rams, and became friends for life with then San Francisco 49ers head coach Dick Nolan. "I went because I was looking to learn something," Gibson said years later. "Their game is the same as ours. They're looking for the same type of individual": huge, fast, tough...
...Jack raised the profile of the coach by demanding he receive the same salary as his highest-paid player, and by insisting on the American tradition that the coach - who lives and dies on results - should select his own staff and teams. Former coaching colleague Roy Masters called him the Australian Vince Lombardi...
...callow reporter, I dealt with Gibson when, in the shadows of his career in 1990, he was in the midst of a typically intense State of Origin campaign as the coach of New South Wales. He was clearly under stress: his reputation was on the line (Queensland had trounced N.S.W. under Gibson the previous year) and there was a whisper that, among the players, he was seen as a little out of touch. At team training one morning, while Gibson "fed the chooks," as he called speaking to journalists, I botched the phrasing of a question and he lasered...
...passing. "Jack - he loved his players, he cared about his players," said Peter Sterling, who won three premierships under the master at the Sydney club Parramatta. It was to Sterling that Gibson offered perhaps his most famous piece of advice, at once simple, esoteric and delightfully clever. The coach told the halfback, who'd been kicking poorly, to "kick it to the seagulls" - in other words, to a part of the field that is free of opposition players, to the point where the gulls of a coastal city feel safe settling there. Initially baffled, Sterling would later relate the story...