Coaching Insider: Round 11

Wests Tigers Head Coach Ivan Cleary spoke with the media on Wednesday as his side look to make it back-to-back wins when they face the Penrith Panthers.

Following on from a strong last start win over the North Queensland Cowboys, Wests Tigers will face a strong Panthers side this weekend looking to also continue their recent run of form, and boosted by the return of star halfback Nathan Cleary, who will play his first game for the club since Round 3.

It's a game certainly not short on storylines as the Cleary's and Watene-Zelezniak's face off, while Ivan also returns to the club he once coached at. But for the level-headed Cleary, it was all business as usual.

"I'm glad he's back, definitely," said Cleary about his son's return this week.

"Would I be glad if this was another team and another time, though? Probably.

"I'm pretty sure that he'll click in to gear pretty easily.

"It doesn't matter in terms of what our boys do. I don't deliberately target any player in any team, but the players are smart and they know what players they need to pressure at certain times of the game.

"But as a father, it's definitely conflicting — there's no way around it.

"It's a bit of professional integrity and we've both got jobs to do, so that's what we're going to do."

"The Panthers have got a really strong roster up there," he added.

"They've got good young players who all enjoy playing with each other, and you can see that.

"They play for the full 80 minutes and they're aggressive.

"But from all their games so far, you can see that they don't always get everything right at various stages but they've been good enough to outlast various teams this year.

"It's a difficult proposition for us up there; they really fire up at their home ground so it's a good test for us.

See what Ivan Cleary had to say in full about this week's game against Penrith in the video above!