Paul Kent: The truth about me, Wayne Bennett and Benji Marshall

FIND out the true story about what happened between Benji Marshall, Wayne Bennett and Paul Kent.

• LATE MAIL: All the latest team news

• CRAWLEY FILES: A coaching survival guide

BILL O’Reilly, the great Australian bowler, was Don Bradman’s greatest bowler and greatest adversary.

The two could barely stand each other, Bradman a Protestant and O’Reilly a Catholic, back when that meant a lot.

When someone later asked O’Reilly why he never came forward and offered an honest portrayal of Bradman, unpopular among teammates, his reason was succinct: “You don’t piss on statues,” he said.

Bradman was an ornament.

For many years Wayne Bennett was our statue.

For years, Bennett was regarded as the master of manipulation.

You could write about him like you could not write about others. Every word came with a tinge of halo.

Queensland Father of the Year. Australian Story ...

When Bennett spoke it came as if carved on a tablet.

On Wednesday night we were discussing Brisbane’s offer to re-sign Anthony Milford when I said Milford is not the player he could be, even at 22.

He cuts corners, comes back from the off-season in bad shape, and when Benji Marshall first witnessed it he was “horrified”, I said.

Bennett took exception.

“I confronted a player this morning who allegedly made a comment (about Milford), and he never made that comment, a journalist made it up,” Bennett said at training on Thursday.

Anthony Milford had a slow start to the pre-season.

“To be quite candid with you, I’m kind of over a lot of things and a lot of issues that are happening right now in our game.

“On the Anthony Milford issue this morning, I needed to talk to that player. I had to make sure that comment hadn’t been made or why it was made.

“But the player assured me, and I believe that player, that he never spoke to the journalist and he never gave him that information.”

Let’s look at what Bennett said and put some perspective around it.

Under the old Wayne, the statue, we would walk away firmly convinced of his righteousness and rail at the rat-media for making up stories out of thin air.

Firstly, though, I never said I spoke to Marshall on Wednesday or even Tuesday about Milford, as Bennett led us to believe. I never claimed I did.

Bennett refused to answer questions from News Corp journalists on Thursday.

The last time we spoke was three weeks ago in Brisbane when Fox League got launched. Had a good chat, in fact.

How far back does Bennett’s time frame go? Or did he selectively suggest the conversation was this week so he could make that comment?

I did not even claim the story came from Marshall, as Bennett insinuated.

It came after Ben Ikin, my co-host, who played golf with Marshall and around about the eighth hole asked how Milford was travelling.

Marshall told him the story about training in a manner praising Milford.

Marshall witnessed Milford cutting corners and, appalled at allowing his talent to waste in the gym, said he adopted him as a training partner.

From then on, he told him, if the trainer required them to do 10 reps then they were going to do 11 and Milford responded.

Next, as Bennett again led us to believe, I never quoted Marshall on the show in order to make anything up.

“Benji Marshall is horrified by it,” is what I said. And he was.

Here, Bennett actually does what he accused me of doing: he made it up.

I didn’t even say it was Marshall that told me the story.

I did call Marshall after Bennett had him in his office for a please explain and I apologised to him for throwing him under the bus. I told him to tell Bennett to call me if he pleased, I’d clear his involvement.

Bennett didn’t.

Bennett is always portrayed as the master manipulator of the media, often in situations like now.

Big game against Canberra on Friday, watch the Broncos go now as the coach picks a fight with the media.

In truth, Bennett does not know how to handle such environments and so his instinct is to retreat. Retreat to protect.

So we in the media fill in the space in between, usually with yarns about the master psychologist.

It was part of the Bennett mystique. But that mystique is dead now.

Bennett sat in a press conference at last year’s Four Nations and publicly ripped the attitude of his captain Sam Burgess.

Burgess was sitting next to him.

So we can assume it is all right for Bennett, his God-complex complete, to rip his player publicly in front of the cameras but it is not all right for a 255-game player like Marshall to privately question the work ethic of a teammate?

Is the Bennett mystique dead?

This, at a club who last season set a trap for a teammate by deliberately leaking him false information and then posting his locker with pictures of rats once the story broke.

Who hit Marshall with images of a rat on Thursday when he is more man than the lot of them.

What a rotten joint it must be.

So what was Bennett’s motivation?

“I’m quick to jump on this because I’m over where we are going with all this stuff,” he explained.

Ah, now we finally get to the truth of it.

Who would have guessed that Bennett was actually speaking to a bigger picture, one he did not disclose.

A few weeks back he called the media aside and told them he knew of paparazzi trying to capture photos of him with his new girlfriend.

Wayne Bennett talks to the media after Brisbane Broncos training. Pic Darren England.

He warned them to stop it or he would ban them.

Anybody that knows anything knows these decisions happen well above the pay grade of a rugby league reporter so he might as well have told the pigeons in the park for what good it did.

Then he contacted Queensland police about it, people standing in his corner.

Then on Wednesday night he went out for dinner and again spotted a photographer. Nothing to do with this company but he assumed it was.

So the Telegraph and Courier Mail, owned by News Corp which owns the Broncos, are now banned.

Who would ever believe a grown up could come to this.

Not that everyone in camp Bennett is upset.

Recently Bennett’s new girlfriend Dale Tynan posted a pic of her and Bennett on her Instagram page with a short caption: “Use this one #paparazzi”.

She later changed the caption.

Not for the first time, it seems, history got rewritten in Bennett’s new world.