How the advice from three ‘wonderful teachers’ shaped the NRL’s latest head coach

Josh Hannay will think of three men just before he takes charge of his first official game as an NRL head coach on Saturday. SportNRLNRL 2026How the advice from three ‘wonderful teachers’ shaped the NRL’s latest head coachBy Christian Nicolussi March 6, 2026 — 3.30pmSaveLog in, register or subscribe to save articles for later.Save articles for laterAdd articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Got itNormal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeAdvertisementA few minutes before 3pm on Saturday, when Josh Hannay is making his way up the concrete stairs at the back of the main grandstand in Cronulla, trying to ignore the smell of dampness, there will be three important men he briefly thinks about.The 46-year-old is the latest head coach trying his luck in the NRL with the Gold Coast Titans, the perennial strugglers who take on his old club, the Sharks.Josh Hannay and the three men who helped shape his coaching philosophies – Craig Fitzgibbon, Billy Slater and the late Paul Green.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis/SMHIf it was not for the advice and precious lessons learned from the late Paul Green, Queensland legend Billy Slater, and Cronulla coach Craig Fitzgibbon, who was still wishing his mate all the best just a few weeks ago, Hannay wonders if he would be ready for his big break.“Those three were wonderful teachers in their own right,” Hannay said.Green was a favourite at Cronulla and North Queensland, was coach of the Cowboys when they won their only title in 2015, then again when they made the decider in 2017, only to take his own life in 2022.A few days before the tragic passing of Green, Hannay joined him in the Sharks’ sheds at a reunion, later dropped him at the nearby Cronulla mall, only to never see his dear friend again.New Gold Coast head coach Josh Hannay lays down the law at training.Credit: Gold Coast Titans“It still stops you in your tracks to this day when you realise he’s not around any more,” Hannay says.“‘Greeny’ was the ultimate teacher – I realised how little I knew about coaching until I got back to the Cowboys [as an assistant] and saw the meticulous approach he had to everything.Advertisement“Winning was in his DNA. He lived in the now, but never took his eye off the big picture.“A perfect example of that was the middle of 2017 when we met for coffee one morning in Canberra. We had to win against the Raiders to stay in touch with the finals.Josh Hannay returns to Ocean Protect Stadium on Saturday as a rival head coach.Credit: Getty“We had already lost Johnathan Thurston and Matt Scott, and I said to Greeny, ‘this is going to be a bloody tough game to win’.“He turned to me and said, ‘we need to come up with a game plan capable of beating Melbourne’. Melbourne were streets ahead of the competition at that stage.“I was talking about the Raiders. He knew we had to win, but was always thinking ahead, thinking of ways to beat the beat to be the best. That was the way he was programmed. He had that ultimate belief.”Hannay spent the past five years working under Fitzgibbon at the Sharks, and when the job came up at the Titans, he was initially reluctant because there was a sense of ‘unfinished business’ in the Shire.Cronulla had made the finals four years in a row, and Hannay did not want to depart before the potential main act.He lost count of the number of times he met Fitzgibbon in the “shittiest head coach’s office in professional sport”, discussing what he should do.Fitzgibbon’s calming nature and ability to ignore the lack of external respect, which Cronulla will never receive until they win a premiership, also moulded Hannay’s coaching philosophy.Loading“If he was feeling good or had a lot of crap on his mind, Fitzy was always measured, there was little fluctuation in his mood, and that rubbed off on everyone else,” Hannay said.“Being at Cronulla also opened my eyes to how fickle the external side of the game can be with the media and expert opinions. We won a bucklet-load of games, but it never seemed to be enough.“I’m now at the Titans, we’re coming from a long way back (16th), but I know not to try and please everyone, not to be driven to prove people wrong, or be influenced by outside opinion. All we can control is what we can control.”Hannay’s apprenticeship was completed under Slater, who made him feel right at home when he joined the Maroons’ coaching staff, despite being in the presence of Queensland royalty Thurston and Cameron Smith.Those early days in Origin camps made Hannay feel like an imposter because of the star power available to Slater.“But Billy makes people believe in themselves and believe they can do special things,” Hannay said.Josh Hannay says Queensland coach Billy Slater is capable of getting the best out of his players.Credit: Getty Images“He put that belief in me and made me realise, ‘maybe I can be a good coach and work with the best players’. That gave me enormous confidence.”Hannay is making the Titans players believe. One of those is Saturday’s new No. 7, Lachlan Ilias, who replaces the injured Jayden Campbell. Ilias fell out of favour at South Sydney and St G