Broncos’ coach Wayne Bennett is losing control and his aura
BRONCOS coach Wayne Bennett has become the old man of the NRL shouting at clouds. His injuries are imagined and grave, his world a fog of confusion. Bennett needs help, writes Paul Kent.
Opinion
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WAYNE Bennett has become the old man shouting at clouds. His injuries are imagined and grave, his world a fog of confusion.
Bennett needs help. He is no longer thinking clearly.
His personal life is in turmoil and it affects his judgment.
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Bennett privately fumes about his diminishing legacy with no clue he contributes, brick by brick, to its take-down.
With each fresh outburst he makes it easier for the Brisbane Broncos to move him on, regressing towards the one thing he never was, which is merely a coach.
Once the regression is complete Bennett will be judged solely on wins and losses, not what else he brings to the club, which was always his strength.
Bennett remains an iconic figure at Brisbane. He should have his own statue and a lifetime invitation to the city’s events.
Yet he is flailing.
Football is all Bennett has left and now he knows the Broncos are looking to move him on after next season. He has a contract for 2019 but empty days after that.
His confusion is that the old ways don’t work anymore and yet he is unable to change.
There was a time he held a tight rein over the Brisbane media, enabled largely because he coached in a one-team town where he could discipline those, from Wally Lewis down, that did not fall in to the Bennett way of thinking.
Bennett is no longer a deity in Brisbane. The reverence diminishes.
To try to draw some of that ground back Bennett is again playing the victim.
“You guy have ruined it,” he said when he walked out of Thursday’s press conference because he did not want to talk about Brisbane’s interest in Craig Bellamy succeeding him as coach.
Bennett is complaining about unfair treatment from the media even though he has treated most of the media unfairly, and often with disdain, his entire coaching career.
The questions were legitimate because the Broncos’ interest in Bellamy is real and it broke a day before Bennett was to go up against Bellamy at Suncorp Stadium.
Bennett’s poor handling of the press conference revealed the illusion behind his reputation as a media manipulator.
It is such a strong reputation that some will still argue Bennett’s walkout was calculated and the perfect response when the truth is he was unable to cope with the questioning.
For the first time in his 32-year career Bennett has another coach positioned behind him to take over.
He is not handling it well.
So he blames the media for his declining reputation.
He has spent his lifetime involved in rugby league and has done many good things for many people. He was an inspiration for many. Thousands will not hear a bad word about him, prepared to quite rightfully quote some kindness Bennett bestowed upon them.
Yet Bennett no longer obeys his own rules.
Increasingly caught in his own inconsistencies he suggests a media conspiracy.
On April 3 Wally Lewis suggested Anthony Milford should move to fullback in a bid to spark the Broncos’ misfiring attack.
Former Queensland great Gary Belcher said Milford looked “lost” at five-eighth.
They had evidence. Through the first five rounds the Broncos were scoring 10 points less a game than they did last season. Halfback Kodi Nikorima was struggling to manage the game.
Bennett was asked about it at his weekly press conference after the story appeared.
“You’ve been ill-informed,” he said to his interrogator.
It was smackdown for Lewis and Belcher but also a shot at conditioning the journalist.
Don’t ask hard questions.
Bennett is often accused of being a master media manipulator, an accidental reputation, at best.
He is unwilling to engage in sensitive conversation with journalists so often controls the questioning with an old strategy the police academy taught to control crowds; single out one to cower the rest.
So Bennett embarrasses one and the rest offer goofy smiles, thankful they were spared.
In response to Lewis he said he was sticking by his young halves.
“I’m not making changes, I have the best players in this club on the field,” he said.
A fortnight later Bennett made changes.
In the interim Nikorima missed the Warriors game through injury and the Broncos scored double their season average against to beat the undefeated Warriors.
So Bennett stuck with the replacement combination, Milford and Jack Bird, for the game against Melbourne.
Heading into that game, though, the story was no longer the halves but the Broncos’ decision to pursue Bellamy.
Bennett had previously indicated 2019 might not be his final season.
“To be honest, I don’t see the end coming,” Bennett told The Courier-Mail last October.
“Retiring or finishing up in coaching just isn’t in my head.
“I need to have a discussion down the track with Brisbane about what I want to do, but I’m not in any state in my mind that I have to stop coaching the Broncos or even England … age isn’t an issue.”
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For the first time he realises his future at the Broncos is no longer his decision.
Significantly, there has not been a breath of protest around Brisbane about the Broncos replacing Bennett with Bellamy.
In past years they would have descended on Club Bronco with torches lit.
All this weighs on Bennett.
After Thursday’s press conference he had a crack at the journalist who asked him about co-coaching with Bellamy.
Bennett progressed from complaining about the line of questioning to a small rant about the worth of contracts, saying he had a contract for next year and that he realised contracts could be broken and that surely the journalist understood that because, after all, the journalist had a marriage contract once and he broke that.
The journalist was stunned.
“Let’s not start talking about broken marriages,” he said.
A fortnight earlier coach Nathan Brown said Newcastle’s roster problems were caused by Bennett “thinking with his little head and not his big head” and Brown was quickly criticised for delving into Bennett’s personal life.
Now here was Bennett using what leverage he had left to bring a journalist into line.
The man is flailing, no longer obeying the code that made him so properly revered.
He needs help, which many know.
They also know, with great sadness, that he will unlikely listen.