Footy great Jamie Soward took his team to a grand final win - now he says the club doesn't even have his phone number even though he worked for them last year
The ex-Saints halfback, who led the club to a grand final win in 2010 and later coached their NRLW team, has shed light on a rift that has left fans stunned.
Soward says things are so bad that club bosses had to ask a third-party contact for his details to invite him to an upcoming premiership reunion.
'There's [a former players' day] coming up next month, which this sums up for me,' he told James Graham's The Bye Round podcast.
'They had to ring someone, a mutual person that works at the club, to get my details to invite me to it. Really? I worked there last year.
'I've never felt welcomed back after I left. Even when I was coaching, I've never felt welcome back. And they can say what they want to say. That's how I feel.'
Soward, who racked up 141 games for the Red V, revealed that notable club figures didn't reach out to him after he was sacked as the NRLW coach.
'There's people there that knew me before I came back into coaching that I would talk to, that see around the traps, that when I got let go, didn't check in on me, didn't see anything at all,' he said.
'And rugby league is a really small world. If you really, really hate someone, that's hard to come back from. But there's guys there that I expected to reach out.
'I had guys from other clubs - former players, Ben Hornby, Brett Morris, Dean Young - rang me personally. "Flanno" rang me. But there's other people in that organisation that looked at me and just treated me like [they did in 2013].'
Soward joined the Panthers on a four-year deal in 2014 after the Dragons decided to only offer him a one-year extension.
'People say, "Why'd you leave the Dragons?" The Dragons got rid of me,' he said.
'They didn't want me there in 2013, which is fine. When one club is offering you four years, and a club you've won a premiership with offers you one year without any resolution to sit down and say, "Where do you want to get to?"
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