The people and players that inspired Wayne Bennett’s journey to 800 coaching NRL games
AS Wayne Bennett’s future becomes uncertain, Paul Crawley looks back on the life and coaching career of the man himself and the people and players who got him where he is ahead of his 800th game as a coach.
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EVERYONE is the sum of their life experiences.
Many young men will use a harsh upbringing as an excuse for not being the man they could be.
And the truly great ones will use it as their strength to be everything they possibly can be.
Wayne Bennett’s life lessons started the day he was born — his alcoholic father left his mum to walk home from hospital in 40c heat with a baby in her arms.
On Thursday he will coach his 800th NRL game having accomplished what no man in history has gone close to.
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Yet with questions about whether Brisbane plans to move Bennett on next year and replace him with Craig Bellamy, Bennett told The Daily Telegraph ahead of tonight’s game against Parramatta: “I will keep coaching until I lose the eye for it. Age is not going to define me.”
THE BEGINNING
It’s New Year’s Day, 1950.
“And Dad’s nowhere to be seen,” Bennett recalled, of the story told to him about the day of his birth.
“Anyway, Dad turned up a couple of days later, pissed, carrying clothes in a pillow case.
“When mum checked herself out of hospital, she had no money to catch a cab. So she walked in 40-degree heat, with me in her arms, three kilometres to the train station.
“And I didn’t know it then, but that’s why I never drank.”
Never?
“I couldn’t do it to her,” he said. “I’d seen what she’d gone through with my father.
“My mother battled to give us any chance at all in life. She was always sending me away to stay with uncles and aunties. I’d spend three or four months away, missing school. I never knew why.
“She had the four of us and it was just too much for her to deal with.
“I left school when I was 13. When I was 14, I was working in the meatworks and I made three decisions that would have a huge impact on my life.
“One of them was I would do everything possible to play for Australia in rugby league.
“I also made a decision that I wanted to join the police force. I wanted to better myself.
“And I made a decision that I would never drink alcohol.
“The biggest impact was never drinking. It has allowed me to do all that I have done.”
PLAYING FOR AUSTRALIA
Bennett credits his uncle Eddie Brosnan, who played for Australia, as having the biggest impact on his early footballing career.
“But my first memory of footy was going to watch Dad play,” Bennett said. “I was about three or four.
“The first thing I realised was the footy team was important to the town. And the second was the mateship.
“We didn’t have TV in that era. But they were the guys I looked up to.
“My Dad came to see me play once. I came off and he wanted to give me a lecture.
“I thought I’d played pretty good but he was into me. So I told him to get f***ed, and I started running.
“I still remember him chasing me out of the Warwick Showground.
“I never took advice from him from that day about how I should play football, or live my life.
“I was 10.
“When I was 14, my cousin came around and said, ‘We are short of players in the under-18 team, will you play?’
“I said, ‘Sure’.
“I couldn’t wait to be asked.
“When I was 21, I got picked in a train-on squad for the emerging Queensland team and they put us in camp for two months at Suncorp Stadium.
“It was a turning point in my life. I had so much confidence after that. I played for Queensland that year and got picked for Australia for an eight-day tour of New Zealand.
“I remember I was embarrassed. (Graeme) Langlands was captain, Harry Bath coach. I was humbled.
“There was an old toilet at the back and I went around without a shirt on with my Australian jersey.
“I remember looking at it and thinking that all I had done had been worth the effort and the sacrifices just to have that jersey.”
‘I’VE NOT LOST MY EYE’
Bennett’s first coaching gig was with Queensland’s police academy.
“I was still playing as well as trying to be a police officer and three kids came to me halfway through the year and said, ‘Look, we’ve lost our coach. He has an illness in the family. If you don’t coach, we can’t play.’
“I’d never met the boys but I made a decision that I would do it because I wanted to give something back.”
That was 1973 — 43 years on Bennett’s passion is as strong as ever.
“I went to Canberra in 1987 because Don Furner was at the end of his coaching life,” he explained of his first NRL coaching appointment. “Don was wonderful to me … he did a great job with me. But the thing I learnt with Don immediately was that Don had lost the eye for it.
“He loved being around the boys. But he had lost the eye for the actual mundane part of coaching.
“And I promised myself, as a 37-year-old, that when I got to that point, I would walk out.
“I have not reached that point. I am as committed as ever. I am up at five every morning. I work long days.
“I haven’t changed. No one can tell you I have.
“Shane Webcke was in the change-room last Friday night (after the win over the Sydney Roosters) and he said, ‘Coach, I love to see your passion. I was wondering whether you’d lost it.’
“I said, ‘Shane, when I lose that, mate, I won’t be here.’
WHAT RUGBY LEAGUE NEEDS
PLENTY of people would like to see Wayne Bennett move into the game’s governance if he ever decides to stop coaching.
But given Bennett has no plans to retire, we thought we’d ask him anyway for his view on the current administration after another week of mayhem at League Central.
“I think what we need today is administrators with intestinal fortitude,” Bennett said bluntly.
“I am not talking about the NRL board here. That is not my beef.
“My beef is when it comes to the rules, you have got to have a vision of how you want the game to be played.
“And administrators are the ones who make the rules and make those decisions.
“They have got to understand what the fans need and what they want to see.
“And they have got to provide that product.
“And the rest of us have got to be the servants of that.
“I don’t feel that happens.
“I feel that the 1970s and the ’80s, I loved the Kenny Arthursons, I loved the John Quayles, I loved the Ron McAuliffes and I loved the Kevin Humphreyses.
“They were my era of guys.
“And you know what I loved about them? They made bloody decisions and they told the rest of us to get stuffed.
“And it wasn’t decision-making by a bloody council or a bloody committee.
“They made the decision and then they came to us and said this is what we are doing.”
Asked if he thought today’s game was over-coached, Bennett responded: “It is over-coached. It is over-managed. It is over-governed.
“The whole bloody concept is today is just ridiculous.
“Do you think State of Origin would come into vogue now in 2018 under our present set up?
“It would never happen because we would all argue and fight, which they also did back then, the clubs.
“But what did McAuliffe (Queensland Rugby League) and Humphreys (NSW Rugby League) do? They had a meeting together and they told the rest of us to get stuffed.
“Thirty-something years on they have this.”
THE PLAYER WHO CHANGED WAYNE
Wayne Bennett won’t nominate favourites. Won’t even pick his top five of all-time.
But given the significant influence he’s had on so many lives throughout his 43 years coaching, we asked which player had the biggest influence on him as a man?
Straight up, he said Allan Langer.
“Alf made me realise what we do is fun,” Bennett said.
“We have got to not take the fun away from it.
“He made me realise that you can laugh and have a joke and you can still do a very good job.
“And he made me realise that in an environment like that, where there is laughter and enjoyment and great work ethic, everybody thrives.
“He loosened me up a lot to tolerate a whole lot of things I didn’t think I would be able to tolerate.
“Alf brought an element to it that just made me realise that we don’t have to go around headbutting walls and putting our elbows into lockers and thinking we have to be tough dudes 24/7 and thinking we can’t have fun and enjoy what we do.
“He still brings a smile to my face quicker than anybody else.
“And he is good with me. He can still say; ‘Mate, back off.’
“But he is also such a great competitor.
“I still believe, and nobody will ever convince me any different, he was the best player in the NRL for 10 years.
“The 10 years he played he was outstanding.”
Asked if being a non-drinker ever made it difficult to mix in social occasions, he added: “No, I never found it difficult.
“Again, as a young boy, when all my mates were on the drink and we were playing footy, I still had a choice.
“Do I go home or sit in the corner and sulk and become a bore.
“Well, I am boring. But do I go out and become part of the night, but at the same time remain sober.
“It was an easy choice. I am introverted, but I like to be around people who make me laugh.
“I’ve loved Alf.”
HOW CLOSE HE CAME TO SOUTHS
YOU’VE probably heard how Wayne Bennett’s deal to coach the Sydney Roosters fell through in late 2006 after a meeting he had with Nick Politis was leaked to the media.
Well, here’s just how close Bennett came to coaching South Sydney when he left St George Illawarra at the end of the 2011 season — and how, ultimately, a car park swung his decision to head to Newcastle instead.
“The best financial offer I ever had, to this day still, was Peter Doust’s offer for me to stay at the Dragons,” Bennett recalled. “But I didn’t want to stay.
“I thought I’d done everything I could do there (premiers in 2010), it was time to move on.
“I didn’t want to spoil it with a bad season or whatever.
“So South Sydney were chasing me and I was keen to go, but two things happened.
“Dean Young and Ben Hornby came to me and said, ‘Coach, we hear you might be going to South Sydney?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, well, that could be correct.’
“And they said to me, ‘Why would you leave us and go to South Sydney. We can handle you going somewhere else outside Sydney, but that is going to be pretty hard on us.’
“They thought they’d let me down somehow and I said, ‘You’ve never done that, boys. You know that.’
“They were wonderful players and I just couldn’t do that to them.
“But the second thing, and you will get a laugh out of this, when I went to see (Souths chief executive) Shane Richardson about the job, I couldn’t find a park when I went to his house.
“And I got pissed off. I thought, if this is Sydney I don’t want to be in Sydney. I can’t get a park.
“So they were the two big things that had an influence on my decision.
“I would have loved to have coached South Sydney, It is a great club with great tradition.
“Anyway, it is an amazing thing when you make big decisions. It can be just a simple little thing that will throw you off.”
MILESTONE MATCH
Ahead of the milestone match against the Parramatta Eels, Bennett said: “I will leave you on this note. I have tried to prepare teams all my coaching life to absolutely do their best on any given day. To play the football I love, the way I was brought up.
“To play by the rules, and have you as a fan walk away proud of your team.
“Whatever club I have been at, that is all I have ever wanted.
“For you to love the game like I love the game, because it is much more than a game of footy.
“I understand what it gives our sons and the difference it makes in our lives, the places it can take them and the men it can make them.
“My greatest influences have all been rugby league people.
“And if I made something of my life it is a credit to them because they are the guys that gave me the direction, gave me the belief, that I could be what I wanted to be.”