It took Jamal Idris half a season to begin to understand his coach and double that time to get him to laugh at one of his jokes.
While that is a pretty long time when you tell as many jokes as the former Canterbury and Gold Coast prankster, it does reflect the character of coach-of-the-year Ivan Cleary.
He is one of the hardest people in rugby league to read.
If you were unaware of the result of a match, his post-match press conferences would not give much away, neither would his post-game talk in the sheds.
Before he joined the Panthers for pre-season training, Idris had a phone conversation with Cleary that left him wondering whether he would get along with his new mentor.
"I was on the phone to him and he was just straight," Idris recalls.
"I was like, 'all right'. I didn't know how I was going to take him at first. The first couple of months or so I still didn't know how to take him. The things he was saying I didn't understand. It literally took me until around round 10 or 11 to understand what he was about.
"I joke around a lot and I joke around with the boys a lot and everyone's pretty animated. But I'd say a joke and he'd just sit there and his face wouldn't change at all. I started making a joke where I was calling him Ivan Milat. I go to him, 'I'll stop calling you Ivan Milat when you start smiling'. He broke a smile on the weekend so I stopped calling him Ivan Milat."
South Sydney's Michael Maguire, Melbourne's Craig Bellamy and Canterbury's Des Hasler are among the most animated coaches the game has known.
But Cleary is the polar opposite.
Idris has been at the foot of the mountains for nine months and is yet to hear Cleary raise his voice. He is still unsure whether an inner demon is locked underneath that calm exterior.
"We had some losses there as well ... you think he could be a lot more animated and blow up but he didn't," Idris said.
"He's very straight. He's always thinking. He'll go home and rack his brain overnight then come in the next day with a new game plan and tear everything down and start again.
"I haven't heard him raise his voice yet. It's weird. I make a lot of people raise their voice. I don't know [if it's in him]. It's a little bit too creepy. Do you know when someone's overly calm when you're having an argument? You never know what's going to happen and you're thinking 'he might stab me here' and you start backing off."
While Idris is back enjoying rugby league again after a well-publicised stint away from the sport, he has also rebuilt his game under the tutelage of Cleary.
Idris' shift to the left side of the field has been almost seamless. He has been one of the form centres of the competition over the past two months.
"He's definitely changed my game up a lot," Idris said of Cleary.
"I played over a hundred games on the right side ... I didn't really know how to take it at first, but now he's starting to show me a few things about being on the left, like running different lines and angles.
"It's definitely changed my game up a lot. I used to be on the right side and have the left fend and right offload. Now I'm just running better lines on the left side. Footy is footy at the end of the day. It has taken me a while to get used to it but I did it."
