NRL 2021: How close Wests Tigers came to signing Wayne Bennett
Would Wests Tigers be better off with Wayne Bennett? It’s a question worth asking, with the revelation of just how close the supercoach came to signing with the club.
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Tigers fans, ask yourself this. How would you feel if Wayne Bennett were currently at the helm?
The question isn’t based on the possibility of the supercoach soon taking over from Michael Maguire. Neither is it a shot at ‘Madge’, who the Tigers are backing all the way.
It’s based on the fact that Bennett was readying himself to coach the Tigers before Maguire was appointed to commence one of the biggest clean-up jobs in the game.
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The answer will be returned by Tigers fans with polarising views.
Would Luke Brooks be firing? Would James Roberts or Joey Leilua be at the club? Who would Bennett bring? Would Benji Marshall have retired in the black, white and gold?
They’re all questions worth pondering.
Because if the plan by the Tigers brains trust had come off, it’s Bennett who would be delivering the final word inside the dressing rooms in Newcastle on Sunday.
On a day where the Tigers are attempting to avoid three-straight losses to start the season — a worrying statistic that the joint-venture has achieved only once before, in 2007 — the story of the club’s bid for the longest-serving coach in history is worth revealing.
In the middle of 2018, with the Broncos administration throwing shade all over their most successful coach, the Tigers were back in Sydney not sure if their coach Ivan Cleary was going to be on or off the bus.
Cleary had a contract for both the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
But by October, 2018, Cleary was up and gone — returning to Penrith and hitching himself to a five-year deal and the opportunity to coach his son, Nathan.
To say the Tigers — in surprising contrast to how they’ve operated so many times before — were caught short and left to madly scroll the internet for a list of off-contract coaches is wrong.
They had a plan.
Wayne Bennett was its name.
Not long after the whispers about Cleary returning to the Panthers began to develop into the sound of crashing cymbals, Tigers CEO Justin Pascoe took a flight to the Sunshine Coast to meet Bennett.
Wanting to keep the meeting out of public view, Pascoe took the unusual step of hiring a hotel room at the Novotel Twin Waters for the 90-minute meeting.
Pascoe picked up his key for Room 243 and the pair laughed as they opened the door for their first face-to-face meeting inside the quaint hotel room.
They hit it off.
The old fox and one of the game’s new breed didn’t let their difference in age, or experience get in the way of a good laugh and a plan for Bennett to take over at Concord.
So comfortable was Bennett in Pascoe’s pitch, he approved the financial terms that the Tigers were proposing.
But then came the sticking point — and essentially the deal-breaker, which led the Tigers to then ramp up their pursuit of Maguire, who they had also circled.
Reading the tea leaves that Cleary was certain to seek a release from his contract at the end of 2018, the Tigers told Bennett they would need him to begin as head coach for the following season, in 2019.
The problem was, Bennett had a contract with the Broncos until the end of 2020.
He simply wasn’t willing to break that Brisbane deal and walk away from his players to join the Tigers in 2019.
The Tigers only needed to wait two months and they would have had Bennett.
What we all know is, Bennett was eventually sacked in December, 2018 — two months after Cleary walked — so that the Broncos could bring in Anthony Seibold.
Those two months cost the Tigers the signature of Bennett.
When Cleary walked, the Tigers were in a hurry to appease fans and sponsors with the style of leadership that shows a clear direction.
With that intent, the Tigers weren’t prepared to play the waiting game for Bennett which revolved around the timeline of a bumbling Broncos board.
From the departure of Cleary in October and with Bennett unable to sign, Pascoe went after Maguire.
Bennett has rarely spoken about how close he came to joining the Tigers.
However, he revealed just how close he was with this short grab last year, when denying reports that he had shaken hands with Phil Gould to coach Penrith instead of taking over at Souths in 2020.
“The truth is this; the only team that I ever talked to was the Wests Tigers,‘’ Bennett said.
“There was a three-year deal with them on offer and I would have done the deal with the Tigers if the Broncos were upfront with me and told me they were going to sack me for 2019.
“I gave my word I was staying at the Broncos and I intended to honour my final 12 months, so that’s why I knocked back the Tigers.‘’
It’s a question worth asking.
Would the Tigers look any different, if they had Wayne Bennett?
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