RISE OF GARTH
NEW MENTOR’S JOURNEY
IT was only later, sitting at home with his wife Rachael, that Garth Brennan reflected on the real danger and what he could have lost.
“There was an incident with a knife one time,” Brennan says, as he reflects on a routine call-out that could have changed his life.
Domestic violence situations are among the most volatile that police can be involved in.
Then a uniformed police officer in his late 20s, Brennan was confronted by an angry partner brandishing a knife. “At the time it didn’t really affect me much,” he says.
“But when you get home and sit with Rachael, you think, jeez, that was close.”
There’s not much Brennan didn’t experience in his 18 years in the police force.
Brennan was more than a handy footballer in his own right, forcing future Maroons and Australian fullback Robbie O’Davis to the wing as he made Newcastle’s No.1 jersey his own at Jersey Flegg level.
But with few players making a living from the sport full-time, he opted to pursue a career in the police force.
“Back then, all players were either a copper or a garbo, I think they were the two career choices you had (if you wanted to juggle work and footy),” Brennan says.
“Paul Sironen was a police officer, Wayne Bennett, Mal Meninga - there were a lot of guys that were coppers as well as footballers.
“I just think the police and football had a good relationship and it worked.
“Bosses were likely to give you some time off to play footy because they loved footy themselves.
“I’ve always been a caring person and wanted to help people and that’s helped me to become the coach I am.”
There were few things Brennan didn’t do during his police career.
He worked as a uniformed officer and in a country station, before going into plain clothes as a detective working in the anti-theft squad and doing undercover work.
Buying drugs undercover or working as a uniformed officer in the front line always has an element of danger and when Brennan and Rachael married and started a family, he took a safer option, becoming a police prosecutor.
“Rachael was a solicitor going into the courts Monday to Friday and it worked well because I could keep doing my football,” he says.
“And when the crooks come to you in the court they’re on their best behaviour because they’re in front of a magistrate.
“So it took that danger element out of it for me.”
But it was the lifestyle that attracted Brennan more than anything else.
The office hours let him throw himself into two great passions - football and family.
Still working in the Newcastle system, Brennan was
presented with an opportunity to make football his full-time job in 2010 as the Knights’ under-20 coach.
But real-life experience shaped Brennan’s coaching.
“If (one of my players has) an issue, come and talk to me because whatever you’ve got, I’ve seen it before,” he says.
“You see a lot of ex players, they’ve played full-time, they go into welfare in the football department, they go into coaching or whatever it might be - but they haven’t lived.
“I’ve had 18 years in the police; I’ve scene things a lot of people haven’t seen.”
Brennan was a victim of the staff clean-out after Wayne Bennett was hired at the Knights but he found a new home at Penrith - on a handshake deal after a fiveminute meeting with Phil “Gus” Gould in a Maccas car park on the NSW Central Coast.
“He got out of his car, I got out of my car, he said: ‘I want you to have the job’, I said: ‘No worries’ and it was done,”
Brennan says. “I never had a signed contract with Gus. It was always a bit old-school.”
Brennan missed out on the Panthers top job in 2016 but holds no animosity over it.
“For (Gus) to say, yep, you’re ready for NRL now, and to be a supporter of mine with the Titans, that makes me feel like I’m ready too.” he says.