Paul Green: The bantamweight, the brain and lasting legacy
Paul Green punched above his weight – bantam at best, in league terms – from the outset.
A keen pugilist after he hung up the boots, Green’s debut in the big smoke came opposite Ricky Stuart and a 1994 Raiders team that ranks among the best ever assembled at club level.
Green and the Sharks bested them that day at Endeavour, where NRL head of football Graham Annesley was between Stuart and Green come scrum time in his previous life as a whistleblower.
“Whip smart, about the size of a whippet and competitive as anything,” Annesley recalled on Thursday after Green’s death, aged 49. “But always fair with you too. Very fair.”
The old Rothmans’ Medal that was decided by a 3-2-1 referees’ vote in those days had an emphasis on ‘best’, but also took in ‘fairest’ as well.
It was awarded to Green in 1995, just one year after John Lang brought him down from Brisbane club Easts Tigers.
“It took him one year to work that level of rugby league out and win that in a competition with Allan Langer, Ricky Stuart and Andrew Johns,” Cronulla and Queensland teammate Mat Rogers said. “What does that tell you?”
Many of the rugby league types Green impacted as a teammate, friend and coach were too shattered to speak on Thursday. Those that could, talked of toughness, intelligence and “a different outlook on the game”.
A different look at times too. Like when he collected the 1993 Rothmans medal in the Brisbane competition missing his eyebrows because future Sharks and Maroons teammate Craig Greenhill had shaved them off.
At just 167 centimetres, it’s tipped Green would still have put up a fair old fight to keep them.
Paul Green’s playmaking prowess helped him punch above his weight.Credit:Action Photographics
A rare tenacity helped him prosper in a game where the giants grew larger by the day. But an even rarer footballing IQ saw Green’s contribution to the game go far beyond 162 first-grade games and seven Origins for Queensland – which by all and sundry, would have been far more if not for the presence of Allan Langer.
A pilot’s licence, the ability to speak multiple languages and play multiple instruments speak to the natural intelligence he was gifted, then honed.
Nowhere more than on a footy field. Wayne Bennett credits Green with driving the cross-field kick for wingers during the late 1990s, taking advantage of the athletic ability possessed by the likes of Rogers and Andrew Ettingshausen out wide.
“Even last week,” Rogers said of the Cronulla old-boys reunion they both attended, “Greeny was on another level. I like to think I can read the game pretty well, but something happened in the game and he picked it apart in an instant and explained why it had happened.
Paul Green was in charge of the Cowboys for 167 games with the 2015 title coming in his second season as head coach.Credit:Getty
“He had a rare footballing brain and while he was tough, that probably helped him thrive at his size too. He had to be smarter than the rest of us, and he was.”
At the Cowboys, Green would speak of recruiting different body shapes and sizes in his forward pack. Why the 10 extra centimetres James Tamou had on Matt Scott provided a minute, but critical advantage when colliding with defenders.
Through coaching stints at Wynnum-Manly in the Queensland competition, Trent Robinson’s title-winning Roosters staff in 2013, North Queensland and the Maroons, Green always gave the game more thought than most.
“I loved working with Paul for his incredible football mind, passion and humour,” Robinson texted the Herald.
“As good a person as he was a coach, I enjoyed the time Greeny and I had as mates coaching against each other and sharing our views on the game in the years that followed.”
Green will always remain a treasured figure in Townsville thanks to the breakthrough 2015 title he delivered. That he took North Queensland to a grand final just two years later with co-captains Johnathan Thurston and Scott leading a horrific injury toll, might just be his finest coaching feat of all.
Despite the late lean years that cost him his job, Green’s gift to the game north of the border remains colossal.
It had been set to continue too, Bennett talking with Green just a week ago about joining the Dolphins coaching staff as an assistant next season.
“He did a lot for the state league up here as a player and then as a coach,” Bennett said. “He’s a great rugby league man and a great contributor to the game here in Queensland. There’s just a lot of sad people in the game today.”
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