NRL 2022: Wayne Bennett sealed Adam Reynolds’ Brisbane Broncos move with secret phone call

Wayne Bennett, the Red Hill icon infamously sacked by Brisbane, reveals the secret phone call he made as South Sydney coach that sealed Adam Reynolds’s move to the Broncos.

Wayne Bennett (R) and Adam Reynolds during the pair’s South Sydney days. Picture: Phil Hillyard

It was the secret phone call from a super coach that delivered Adam Reynolds to the Broncos and put him on the path to a special milestone.

As Reynolds prepares to celebrate his 250th NRL game against Parramatta on Thursday night, News Corp can reveal how Wayne Bennett - the coach ironically sacked by Brisbane - played a pivotal role in convincing the Broncos to sign him.

Reynolds’ NRL career could have easily hit a dead end last season when South Sydney played hardball in negotiations, refusing to table a multi-year contract for the premiership-winning halfback champion.

With Reynolds embroiled in a protracted contract spat with Souths and, with each passing week, giving up hope of a Redfern reconciliation, Bennett, in his final winter months as Rabbitohs coach, picked up the phone.

Brisbane’s only premiership coach called one of his greatest soldiers, Broncos halfback great Allan Langer.

The topic was Adam Reynolds.

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Wayne Bennett (R) and Adam Reynolds during the pair’s South Sydney days. Picture: Phil Hillyard

The street-corner tip was that ‘Reyno’ was busted and on his last legs as an NRL player. After all, that’s why Souths were offering him only a 12-month deal. Taped up like an Egyptian mummy, Reynolds was allegedly on modified training; at risk of breaking down for good any given season, any given game.

Bennett was sick of the career-threatening rhetoric. So he passed on a hot tip to ‘Alfie’.

“Alf, tell Kevin (Walters, Broncos coach) to sign Adam Reynolds,” Bennett told Langer.

“Tell him to just do it. Adam will not let you down.”

As he always did as a player, Langer pulled the strings and did the job for Bennett, relaying the message to Walters.

The Broncos coach subsequently flew to Sydney with chief executive Dave Donaghy for a meeting with Reynolds. They tabled a three-year, $800,000 offer, a dicey $2.4 million investment on a 31-year-old with more years behind than ahead of him.

The Reynolds lifeline could have backfired badly. Instead, Bennett’s sage assessment has proved prophetic.

In just 18 games and five premiership months, Reynolds has hauled the Broncos from third last to finals contention and while they have wobbled in recent weeks, on balance the new skipper has engineered a Brisbane revival.

Now, with Brisbane clinging to eighth spot, it is fitting their finals destiny rests on the pint-sized shoulders of the Broncos’ Alfie 2.0; a halfback who has consistently defied the doubters and the odds.

“It’s a great achievement for Adam to play 250 games,” Bennett says.

“I never had any doubts he would do well for Brisbane this year. I’m glad they signed him actually.

“The one thing I learned a long time ago as a coach is you need great players. Adam is a great player.

“He is a real pro. He reminds me a lot of Alf in that he has the cheek of a halfback, but when he crosses the line there is no greater competitor. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1980s and ‘90s with his character and the way he plays the game.

“We clicked straight away at Souths.

Broncos captain Adam Reynolds. Picture: Bradley Kanaris/Getty

“I chose him as captain because I liked his calmness, his demeanour and the way he conducted himself in the change room.

“He was never outspoken. He never talked out of order. He doesn’t talk bulls***. Whatever Adam says he means, he only ever said things that he would deliver on.

“I like that in my captains - and that’s what he has brought to the Broncos.”

Reynolds hasn’t just brought leadership to a club suffering a leadership crisis.

He has given the Broncos a chief shot-caller built on old world rugby league values, when aspiring league stars tweaked, shaped and moulded their talent with incessant games of park footy from dawn ‘til dusk.

While today’s generation drive their parents bananas as prisoners of technology and computer games, Reynolds drove local residents mad honing his footballing instincts on bitumen in his unyielding ambition to reach the NRL summit.

His pinpoint kicks for Broncos winger Selwyn Cobbo are not flash moments of freakish invention but the result of decades of dedication to perfection.

“I was obsessed with kicking the ball when I was young,” Reynolds recalls.

“I was probably a bit of a punish around the streets, whether I was hitting parked cars or missing the telegraph pole.

“We had a game we liked to play - me and my brother, my cousin and best mate - called two-on-two in pretty small spaces.

“We came up with new ways to play the game.

“We were pretty creative as kids and I think that pays tribute to where I am today. I think you have got to have those instinctive skills in the modern game ... look at how Nathan Cleary (Penrith halfback) kicks the ball these days.”

Wayne Bennett says Adam Reynolds (7) reminds him of Allan Langer (blue shirt). Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty

Ironically, it was the worst injury of Reynolds’ career that steeled the iron-willed competitor the Broncos have inherited.

After starring for Souths’ under-20s side, he snapped his ACL in the pre-season of 2011. Reynolds thought his NRL dream had gone the way of his shattered knee. But the rehabilitation involved was the making of him as an NRL star.

Work hard. No shortcuts. No gold-plated, free ride to first grade.

Within three years, he broke Souths’ 43-year title hoodoo, clinching his one and only premiership ring thus far in the Rabbitohs’ 2014 grand final defeat of the Bulldogs.

“I had a knee reconstruction out of the under-20s and I thought the dream was over,” Reynolds said.

“But I got into the gym with guys like Mick Crocker and Roy Asotasi and I learned the professionalism of this sport. It was a blessing in disguise. I was small back then, but I put on a few extra kilos and after a really tough pre-season I got the opportunity to play first grade.

“The path I’ve gone on has shaped the character I am in the NRL.”

It is testament to Reynolds’ toughness that in his first 10 seasons of NRL, he played 20 or more games in a single campaign eight times. His lowest seasonal tally of games is 16 in 2016.

In his maiden year at the Broncos, he is on track to finish the regular season with 20 matches. The moral is this: Reynolds hates missing games.

“One thing that pisses me off is people who question his training because he is so committed to his preparation,” Bennett says.

“It’s a myth that he is injury prone.

“There was all this crap about him being on modified training at Souths. It soured him and it soured me. It was so far off the mark.

“Adam is a bloody tough bugger. He has great courage. He is not a big man yet he has played 11 years now against the biggest and best players in the NRL and he has handled it all.

“You can’t be his size, achieve what he has, and not be brave.”

Brisbane’s other little giant, Langer, works with Reynolds on a daily basis at Red Hill. He has come to appreciate his diligence.

“Adam has been wonderful for the Broncos, he has turned the whole club around,” said Langer, the 258-game halfback icon who steered the Broncos to four of their six premierships.

“He is like another coach at the club. He works with young guys behind the scenes and teaches them so much.

“The boys love being around him and love playing for him because of what he puts into the group.

“He is very knowledgeable about the game. If we make the finals this year, he will be a big reason for it.”

The last time the Broncos played Parramatta in round 19, Reynolds turned on a masterclass as Brisbane belted the Eels 36-14 at CommBank Stadium.

Adam Reynolds was appointed captain before making his Broncos debut. Picture: Richard Walker

A month later, in the wake of a 60-12 Melbourne massacre, the teetering Broncos are looking to their leader more than ever to get them to the playoffs.

In game 250, Reynolds is primed for a captain’s knock.

“My thought process will be the same as always,” he said.

“Parra are a good side and they are in great form, it’s a big game for both clubs and it’s a finals game come early.

“I’ve said to the guys, we have got to where we have this year (eighth spot) for a reason. We turned up in games, we’ve had a lot of good results go our way and it doesn’t go away overnight.

“One bad performance (against the Storm) doesn’t justify who we are as a club.

“This is an important game for us ... and I have to be at my best.”

Adam Reynolds knows no other way.

Originally published as NRL 2022: Wayne Bennett sealed Adam Reynolds’ Brisbane Broncos move with secret phone call