Titans coach John Cartwright concedes it's his last chance
From Couriermail.com.au
JOHN Cartwright will steer the Gold Coast Titans for the 150th time at Skilled Park this afternoon but reckons he's lucky to still be in the driver's seat.
"Look mate I'm a realist," he says alighting from a sponsor's monstrous Mazda BT-50 ute and parking his equally commanding 105kg in the foyer of what was once known as the Titans Centre of Excellence.
The building was named at a time when the Gold Coast side was making the finals of the NRL competition but Cartwright admits the name hasn't rung true since 2010.
"The last two years haven't been good and I'm very fortunate to still be here," Cartwright says.
"There's not many clubs that would have put up with the last two year's results. I'd love to be the bloke who leads the Titans from start-up to a grand final but I'm under no illusions that I'm here forever."
Back in the days when he was a teenage fast bowler from the gritty, hard scrabble western Sydney suburb of St Marys, Cartwright would spend Saturday mornings operating in tandem with an even faster tearaway named Phil Gould.
The two have been lifelong friends and Gould not only coached Cartwright to a first grade premiership with the Panthers in 1991 but he's advised him on how to handle the mercurial world of football coaching ever since the Titans entered the competition in 2007.
Cartwright is still as big and imposing as he was packing down with Mark Geyer, Royce Simmons and Paul Dunn but coaching is a tough gig that takes a heavy emotional toll.
'My latest contract is for five years and I've still got three after this one," he says.
"But that doesn't mean a hell of a lot. Long-term deals don't mean anything unless you get results. In this game you can think you're doing a good job and the next month you're out."
His kids Eden, 20, Lexie, 18, and Jed, 16, suffer more than him, he says.
"They cop a hard time at school or on the social media when the side isn't going well and there's been plenty of that over the last couple of years.
"I've won a grand final as a player and I've been involved with very successful teams but it really hurts me, too, when we have a bad season.
"We finished last in 2011 and that was the only time I've ever run last in football.
"We'd made the finals for the previous two years and maybe we rested on our laurels.
"I didn't realise how much the loss of Mat Rogers would affect us and we lost Nathan Friend for most of the year with injury. The last two years will rue me until the day I die."
Cartwright's rugby league life began in 1965 at St Marys, a financially challenged area with a disproportionate number of housing commission homes and broken windows.
His dad, Merv, was a cornerstone of the Penrith Waratahs in the 1950s, leading the pack as a fearsome front-rower. From his home in Carpenter St, just off the Great Western Highway, Merv became the driving force behind the club entering the big show as the Panthers in 1967, when Cartwright was just two.
In the days when even top level rugby league was still a suburban, tribal game, Cartwright would follow his mother Margaret as she stacked canteen shelves at the club or tag along with Merv as he mowed the playing surface, or showed the young blokes how to "go in low, go in hard" when they went out to smash the Eels, their arch foes from down Parramatta Road.
"I was going to games before I could walk," Cartwright says.
"I spent three years in the under-7s at the St Marys club and I've loved rugby league ever since.
"When I was in my teens I played a bit of cricket with a team called the Grey Gum Cavaliers. Sometimes I'd open the bowling at one end and [Phil] 'Gus' Gould was at the other end. Gus was a really good fast bowler, really fast. If he didn't love football so much he could have been a top cricketer."
Gould has been a mentor to Cartwright for most of his life and he has been the man to encourage him to persevere when things were at their bleakest at the Titans, a club rocked in the last couple of years by financial woes and the loss of their key playmaker Scott Prince.
"Gus polarises people," Cartwright said.
"You either love him or hate him. But he's always been a great friend and he's always been there with advice, especially when I've been through a rough patch."
Cartwright's coaching career began in the lower grades at the Panthers, where he had played his entire career. He then was lured to Roosters by Gould in 2002.
His big break came two years later when the money men behind the Titans' NRL bid asked Cartwright's friend, the player manager Wayne Beavis, if he knew anyone who would like a job on the Gold Coast.
Cartwright's first season coincided with the Global Financial Crisis and just like the Australian share market he's ridden a rollercoaster ever since.
Two seasons in the top four, one dead last. The Gold Coast has suffered along with him in plummeting real estate values and high unemployment.
"Having a winning football side here would do so much for the Coast," Cartwright says.
"At Penrith I saw what a successful football club could do for the community - local business thrived when the football team did well.
"Walking down the street there was a vibe - the newsagent had a smile on his face because everyone was buying the paper, all the shops and restaurants did well.
"We've got a great stadium, great supporter base, great facilities, now we just need to be successful on the field and it will lift the community."
Cartwright takes his team into today's match against the Raiders, their 150th in the NRL, with a record of 68 wins against 81 losses. It's not a bad tally considering he was the coach from the start when it took time for the side to jell.
But he knows the win column has to grow if he's to keep the sponsor's big Mazda in his garage. And if he wants to keep driving the team.
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Carty's last chance......
We have all seen the story about how he rates this as his last chance. He had better hope that the team really rises to the challenge as there is a rumour about a pretty good coach that wants to return to Qld to be closer to his family.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/...-1226601027390
Ticks a few of the boxes as a coach I think......................