He’s embarrassed himself: Gould returns serve to Griffin

Penrith Panthers boss Phil Gould has hit back at outgoing coach Anthony Griffin for public comments he has made since being sacked by the club on Monday.

Griffin told all in an interview on Fox League on Wednesday night, including his deteriorating relationship with Gould while firing some shots.

And Gould has returned serve.

“He has embarrassed himself,” Gould told Chanel 9 on Thusday night.

“He’s embarrassed himself in front of the people who know the truth.

“My thoughts were that he shouldn’t have done it, that he was badly advised to go and do it and particularly in the environment in which he did it.

“I don’t think he’s done himself any favours with that interview given the reaction I’ve had from our staff, former staff, staff that left our club because of Anthony and people who have worked in and around our club before Anthony arrived and since he arrived.

“I’m not going to sit here and judge Anthony Griffin for the world to see. I’m not going to reply or respond because he said negative things about me or the club.”

Gould added that he did not believe the team was capable of winning this season's premiership as the ultimate validation for Griffin's culling.

“They wouldn’t have won a premiership the way he was coaching,” Gould said.

“A lot of my disagreements with Anthony was because I had to try and convince him we were trying to help him, not trying to hurt him.

“And he felt he was being undermined, which was the opposite of what we were trying to do. We were trying to help him.

“He had deficiencies, to be brutally honest, and as a club we were trying to work through them and as a club we were trying to work through them.

“I run the club, and I made some big decisions about Anthony Griffin. I employed him in the first place.

“I extended his contract. We protected him in the media, we stood up for him in the media, we’ve tried to help him in a football sense right across the board, to help his style of coaching and to help him through and I had full intentions of him seeing our his contract.”

Gould also revealed that assistant coach Cameron Ciraldo attempted to quit the club on two occasions because he did not want to work with Griffin.