Panthers coach Ivan Cleary was in fine form when he appeared on the Today show while still celebrating his team's stunning grand final win on Monday morning as he cracked up hosts Karl Stefanovic and Sara Abo with a joke about his son Nathan.
Penrith's 26-24 victory over Brisbane will go down as possibly the greatest decider ever played, with Nathan Cleary winning the Clive Churchill Medal as best player on the ground after orchestrating his side's record comeback.
Ivan Cleary was still celebrating the win with a beer in hand when he somehow fronted up to be interviewed just after 6am - and he wasted no time taking the mickey out of Broncos fan Stefanovic.
After telling the hosts he was 'feeling pretty good about life', the coach told Stefanovic, 'Queenslanders, they fail at the end a lot of the time, so we knew they'd falter.'
As laughter rang out in the studio he quickly added, 'That's a gee-up and you know it!'
Asked about his son's amazing effort to turn the tide of the match by setting up one try, landing a crucial 40-20 kick and scoring himself in the dying minutes, Cleary sent the hosts into hysterics with his reply.
'I actually said to him yesterday that if I'd married someone else he would've been a pretty s**t player, so I've got to thank his mum for everything that he's got because it's certainly not from me.'
'That's brilliant!' a delighted Abo said.
Cleary continued: 'I'm so proud of him. You know what? He owes me, I reckon. I've driven him to that many things and made lunches for him and done all this stuff, and he's actually now making my life easy, so god love you, Nath.'
Cleary embraces his son after he led the Panthers to the greatest comeback in grand final history with a performance for the ages
Nathan took out the Clive Churchill Medal as the best player on the ground - with Andrew Johns branding his effort 'the greatest performance by a halfback in a grand final, ever'
When Stefanovic asked if he'd had '1000 drinks', the coach said no and admitted, 'I'm about to sneak off, I'm actually backdooring it, that's what I was trying to do, then you guys got me on the way out.
'I'll try to get an hour's sleep.'
The reigning premiers looked completely out of it on Sunday night after allowing Ezra Mam to score a quickfire second half hat-trick, but fought magnificently to break Brisbane's hearts - with Nathan in the thick of the comeback.
He broke the line with a dummy to put Moses Leota over for the Panthers' first try of the second half, his 40-20 kick was crucial to their second four-pointer, then he sealed the result by beating three defenders to plant the ball over the line with just two minutes left.
Ivan Cleary got the traditional soaking after his team won their third straight premiership - before appearing, beer in hand, on Today at 6am on Monday
'This doesn't even feel real at the moment, feels like a dream,' the halfback said afterwards.
'The start of that second half was a nightmare but our mindset was we're down but never out.
'That's up there with Origin [in terms of difficulty] for sure. So much fatigue. Told myself to keep going, keep going, keep fighting and that's what we do.'
Rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns was blown away by Cleary's play.
'That was the greatest performance by a halfback in a grand final, ever,' he said after the siren.
