Warren Ryan

1962 Commonwealth Games shot put rep was a lock forward in St George's reserve grade grand final win in 1965. Ryan captained Cronulla in 1968 before moving to the I’warra competition, playing for Wollongong Wests from 1969-73 (the last two as captain-coach). He captained Country in 1972 and after coaching Collegians in 1974, he joined Wests U’23s before becoming one of the top coaches of the modern era. Ryan took over as coach of Newtown in 1979 and within three years had taken the club from the bottom of the competition to the grand final. With the Newtown club unable to be competitive on and off the field after the heady days of 1981, he was courted by C’bury in 1984. Ryan helped turn the Bulldogs into a relentless football machine, winning premierships in 1984-85 before being narrowly beaten in 1986. Ever professional, outwardly abrasive and not one to suffer fools, Ryan fought factions within the club for four years before resigning in 1987. At Balmain, he took the Tigers to consecutive grand finals in 1988-89 but drew criticism for his replacement of key players in the 1989 grand final loss against Canberra when the game was at a vital stage. At Wests in the early 1990s, Ryan was able to recruit a solid core of players from C’bury, taking the Magpies to fourth position in the 1991 season. A belated winner of the 'Dally M' Coach of the Year in 1991, things turned sour after Wests' second straight semi-final appearance in 1992. The advent of the 10 metre rule in 1994 made Ryan's defence-orientated style of coaching somewhat redundant and with the club struggling to retain its players and failing to attract corporate sponsorship, the Wests' coach resigned. Ryan has always maintained that he coached to the strengths of his players and his record of 2 wins from 6 grand finals may be a fair measure of the success of that policy. After an absence of five years, during which he developed a media career on ABC Radio, he was a surprise choice as successor to Mal Reilly as Newcastle coach in 1999. Never far from controversy in his two seasons with the Knights, ‘The Wok’ battled the club’s ‘Johns Brothers’ power block, faced a player revolt in early 2000 and even re-ignited his feud with former Wests’ coach and SMH journalist Roy Masters. Retiring after Newcastle’s controversial loss in the 2000 qualifying final against the Roosters, Ryan surpassed Bob Fulton’s first grade coaching record as the most experienced coach in the history of the game (since bettered by Tim Sheens in 2001).