WAYNE Bennett pulled on his polo shirt. He stood there, sizing up the man in the mirror.

“Geez, you don’t look bad in green,” said his partner.

“Not bad at all, is it?” replied Bennett, flashing his trademark crooked grin.

The famous hue of myrtle, one half of the green-and-red colour scheme of the Pride of the League, South Sydney, now covered Bennett’s angular frame.

The Rabbitoh logo had replaced the Bronco. It was more than a simple change of shirt. It was a cathartic experience, a cleansing of the soul, the most tangible evidence of jettisoning ties from a Broncos club to which he had given his life.

Still, the pain did not dissipate so quickly.

As Bennett picked up the pieces from the first sacking of his 40-year career as a coach and moved the shattered shards of his rugby league soul to South Sydney, Rabbitohs chiefs feared they would have ask to Hollywood owner Russell Crowe to buy a brown lounge.

There was some counselling to do.

Like a deflated man recovering from a broken marriage, Bennett had crap on his liver. Venom poured from his tongue as he reflected on his messy divorce with the Broncos.

Season 2019 was meant to be a year of celebration, not degradation. It was to be HIS year. Broncos chairman Karl Morris promised as much in that infamous letter.

Such was his rage, Bennett had engaged lawyers and fired off a legal letter on December 14, seeking $400,000 from the Broncos over his termination. That was on top of the $385,000 payout he had already received from the club for his image rights, which represented a key contractual component of his Broncos deal.

But the Rabbitohs couldn’t afford for Bennett to fret about legal eagles and courtroom brawls with the Broncos. The Bunnies finished one game shy of the grand final under Anthony Seibold in 2018.

The holy grail – one that has eluded Bennett since 2010 – was in sight.

“You have to get over this anger, Wayne,” Bunnies boss Shane Richardson privately told Bennett. “We need your mind on the job.”

It took, of all things, some techno music to crystallise Bennett’s thoughts and motivations and stir the super coach within.

MUSIC TO WAYNE’S EARS

“What the f--k is that,” Bennett screamed.

Christmas was approaching. With Seibold now nestled comfortably in the mighty throne at Red Hill, Bennett drove into South Sydney training, ready to construct the ramparts of the Rabbitohs’ assault on the premiership in 2019.

But there was a problem. A small, but ear-splitting problem.

Bennett walked out to the centre of Redfern Oval and watched in disbelief as his new Rabbitohs troops ran up and down the field to the beat of loud, throbbing music usually heard on nearby Oxford St during the Mardi Gras.

Bennett, a country-and-western man who began coaching in 1976 when that year’s top song was Elton John’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, was about to have a heart attack.

“This is ridiculous,” he thought.

This, apparently, was new-age rugby league, Seibold-style.

The cerebral, university-educated Seibold was a strident fan of techno music at training sessions. A widely-read scholar, Seibold’s research found that high-octane beats helped boost testosterone levels among male athletes at training sessions.

Professional sporting teams in America did it routinely. On his first day at Broncos training, Seibold’s army of assistants marched out of the gymnasium Bennett once inhabited, plonked a big black boombox in the corner of the field and unleashed a playlist straight out of the Ministry of Sound.

Broncos back-rower Alex Glenn broke into a break dance.

“This is awesome, bro,” Glenn said with a beaming smile.

But 922km away at Redfern, Bennett was not smiling. He ordered DJ Burgess to stop the music.

“Get that shit off,” he barked.

The boombox has not been seen since.

Bennett’s methodology was as old school as it was simple. His theory was this: when it’s 10-all in the last 10 minutes of a semi-final, before 40,000 fans, your lungs burning, there’s no techno to boost your hormones.

No pumping beats from Avicii and David Guetta can save you when Latrell Mitchell is flying down the touchline, about to deliver the bullet to your premiership dream.

It was the first definitive point of difference in the obverse worlds of Bennett and Seibold.

OLD SCHOOL MEETS NEW SCHOOL

The new-age Seibold was everything the old-world Bennett was not.

Of course, Bennett’s stance may have been tinged with a degree of hostility ... for there was a little-known, underbelly of history between the pair.

The tensions between Seibold and Bennett went beyond the spiteful coaching saga that ripped the Broncos apart last year.

If there was discord, it seemed to flow one way. Seibold had great respect for Bennett.

A proud Rockhampton boy, ‘Seibs’ was a member of Brisbane’s lower-grades in 1992-93, when Bennett reigned at Red Hill with a star-studded Broncos side lapping up the glory of two consecutive Winfield Cup premierships.

Seibold was never delusional about his talents. He gave his all as a player but was simply not good enough to dislodge the likes of Trevor Gillmeister, Alan Cann, Andrew Gee and Peter Ryan.

But post-football, he developed a liking for educating, mentoring and coaching.

Twenty years after joining the Broncos, Seibold found himself in charge of the Queensland under-16s in 2012. He then progressed to the Queensland under-18s between 2013-15, pulling off an epic defeat of NSW with a class of 2015 that included current NRL players Jaydn Su’a and Brodie Croft.

Seibold’s tenure with Queensland’s junior representative teams put him back on a path with Bennett. At times, it was an edgy collision course.

While Bennett had temporarily left the Broncos to coach at the Dragons, then Newcastle, he still made cameo trips north to help preside over the famous Queensland Emerging Origin program he helped create in 2001.

One day, during a weekend camp at the Queensland Academy of Sport, Seibold earned the wrath of Bennett.

At the time, Mal Meninga was the head coach of the mighty Queensland juggernaut. Bennett was the QAS overseer; Seibold the coach on the rise cultivating the next wave of Maroons stars.

As Bennett watched proceedings, something about Seibold’s behaviour at training irked him. To many, including his players, Seibold was dedicated, likeable, loyal, passionate and confident.

Bennett detected brashness.

He feared Seibold was crossing the fine line between confidence and arrogance. It was not the Queensland way. He pulled him aside for a chat.

“I don’t like what I’m seeing,” was Bennett’s message to Seibold, then in his late 30s.

“Our Queensland program is about humility, just remember that.”

It was hardly an explosive bust-up but it was a genuine pull-through from Bennett, a stern reminder of Seibold’s place among the pantheon of Queensland Origin greats and forefathers and the culture of performance he and Meninga were driving.

Bennett’s words may have had lasting shockwaves. When pressed yesterday on whether Bennett had undermined him in his final weeks at Souths, as Seibold alleged last December, the now Broncos mentor instead lauded the super coach.

“There is no negativity in my mind in and around Wayne,” Seibold said.

“I don’t really know Wayne. I wish him all the best.

“What he did for this club is second to none. He has left a legacy wherever he has been. His longevity is second to none. We won’t ever see a career like his again so I only have positive things to say. I can’t compare myself to what he has done and I never would. There is no comparison there.”

Asked about his time working with Bennett at the Queensland Academy of Sport, Seibold said: “I had a couple of years at the QAS and Wayne oversaw that program. He let us run our program how we wanted. He would come in and observe and give some feedback.

“That was a couple of years ago now, but it was a good learning opportunity and experience.”

As Bennett faced the media yesterday, it was clear the feelings framed by Seibold’s bouquets were not mutual.

Asked about their coach-player relationship at the Broncos in the early 1990s, Bennett snapped: “I don’t think I was a mentor, I didn’t see a lot of him (Seibold).

“He didn’t play in the first grade squad.”

BENNETT HAS THE LAST LAUGH

Weighed down by the toxic smog that descended on Red Hill last season, Bennett is breathing fresh oxygen at Redfern. A key factor in his mental and spiritual reformation has been the attitudes of South Sydney players.

At training, Bennett often chooses to lunch with Rabbitohs players instead of his coaching staff.

The Burgess boys love him.

He joins them in the gym sessions, withstanding barbs from halfback Adam Reynolds. As Bennett’s lean limbs work hard to lift a heavy barbell, Reynolds screams across the gym: “Hey Clint, what’s your favourite movie”, a reference to Bennett’s lookalike, Hollywood star Clint Eastwood.

Even Richardson has seen the light return to Bennett, who is relishing life at his new home in beachside Maroubra in the eastern suburbs.

Bennett jokes he is now a ‘Bra Boy’, sans tattoos, recruited to the infamous surf gang by Souths back-rower John Sutton.

“He’s a new man here. He is rejuvenated,” Richardson said.

“He is happy. He has learnt to trust us. He will put his head around the door and say, ‘Richo, just checking if you are asleep or not’. He is a good guy.”

Richardson accepts some critics believe Souths have erred by signing a coach on the cusp of his 70th birthday. He takes an alternative view – that Bennett’s premiership-winning experience will help deliver their first title since 2014.

“Of course he can win a comp here, I’m confident of that,” he says.

“It’s so hard to win a premiership, it’s not easy at all. You have to have the right squad, the right coach, the right culture and luck with injuries. But everything is in place here at Souths to win the premiership and we have the coach to do it.

“If a coach doesn’t have that trust with his players, he’s got nothing.

“One of the things I took from Wayne over many years is you don’t build a club from the top down, you build it from the bottom up.

“Wayne had a great knack of improving young players. The secret is the quality of coach you bring to the players because that’s what takes you the premiership. The average players become good and the good ones became internationals.

“Wayne has always done it.

“His age gives him credibility, belief and trust with the players. They know he has been there and done it. That was the key to John Lang’s success (when they won the premiership at Penrith in 2003) ... the players believed in him and our players now believe in Wayne.”

Critically, Bennett wants to drive the club’s direction. When he arrived at Redfern, he sat down with Richardson and asked to take charge of the squad’s standards of discipline. He is the boss. If a player steps out of line, Bennett will sort it out.

Richardson clicked his heels and happily handed Bennett the naughty stick.

Whatever happens tonight won’t define Bennett or Seibold’s respective tenures at their new clubs. For Bennett, this was always a bigger-picture fight. It was not about Seibold. It was about earning the right to do what he loves most.

The Broncos saga has not broken him. Just reinforced his love for coaching.

“I’m in a really good place here, I’m really enjoying coaching at South Sydney,” Bennett says.

“If you still have the energy, you only get smarter in coaching, you don’t get dumber.

“It’s simple as that. That’s why I didn’t want to go into another role at the Broncos.

“I love what I do. I enjoy players and seeing young men succeed. I want my guys at South Sydney to succeed.

“There’s your answer. OK ... the music just hasn’t died in me as a coach.”