Word: gibson
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...leader of men, Jack Gibson relied on two key attributes: simplicity and innovation. The first came naturally. The second arose from a 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...
...late 1969, when the world was a much bigger, less connected place and his rival coaches were enjoying their summer holidays, Gibson took the extraordinary step of attending a National Football League conference in Hawaii. He'd felt an affinity with the U.S., having grown up believing that his father's uncle, Hugh Cooper Gibson, was Secretary of State to President Woodrow Wilson. (Much later, he learned that his great-uncle had been merely a senior official in the State Department at that time...
...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...
...Gibson brought back ideas that forever changed rugby league, which at the time was played and coached, even at the highest level, by amateurs. He made strength training compulsory for his players, and introduced video analysis and a preoccupation with statistics into the Australian game. Among these stats was the "tackle count" - a record of each player's contribution in defense. "I might have read it in Sports Illustrated," Gibson said, "where in the American game it takes more talent, experience and a tougher individual to be a defensive player than a runner." Gibson even started to sound like...
...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...