Wayne Bennett forced to watch Broncos training from his office as coaching farce drags on
If anything sums up Brisbane’s embarrassing handling of their coaching transition it was Wayne Bennett reduced to peering at his players on the first day of preseason from his office window. SEE THE PICTURES.
Wayne Bennett is a prisoner in his own palace.
If there is a living, breathing example to adequately capture Brisbane’s messy handling of the succession plan for Bennett, it was laid bare at 10.11am on Thursday at Red Hill.
For Brisbane’s big guns like skipper Darius Boyd and veteran hooker Andrew McCullough, it was their first day back at training for the 2019 pre-season.
Their first session represented the embryonic steps in Brisbane’s quest to break a 13-year premiership drought next season.
It was also the first day back for Bennett.
Fresh from masterminding England’s 2-1 Test series defeat of New Zealand in the UK, Bennett should have been front and centre on Red Hill’s freshly-manicured turf, the Big Boss watching his troops from close range with his trademark crooked grin.
Instead, Bennett was, metaphorically speaking, behind bars at the Broncos.
The coaching circus — and Brisbane management’s confusing communication amid the pursuit of Bennett’s successor Anthony Seibold — has forced this bizarre, nonsensical incarceration.
As Broncos players trained happily in a relaxed mood, Bennett felt under siege, determined to sidestep the relatively minor gathering of media by hiding away in the plush office he may be forced to depart in coming weeks.
How did it get to this? Wayne Bennett, the NRL’s greatest mentor and Brisbane’s only premiership coach, reduced to watching his players, at the great club he built, through a second-floor glass window.
The Courier-Mail exclusively captured the moment Bennett briefly left his office to peer at the action below.
After six hours in confinement, Bennett produced a Houdini-style escape. By 2.30pm, he had vanished, avoiding five news crews by using decoy cars, crawling to an escape vehicle and lying down in the back seat to flee Red Hill.
Backdoor Benny had done it again.
Welcome to the latest episode of Australia’s Most Wanted … err, sorry, day one of Brisbane’s 2019 pre-season.
A besieged coach seeking shelter like some sort of on-the-run criminal amid a group of confused players who have spent the past week discussing who will be their boss next season.
As Bennett hid, McCullough fronted the media. He should have been waxing lyrical about Brisbane’s bright new campaign. Instead, the first question was whether Bennett would be their coach next year.
McCullough flashed a wry, Bennett-style grin and shrugged his shoulders.
“Same as you guys, as players it’s the unknown,” he said.
“We can only be guided by Wayne says. He will be here at the moment and we’ll go from there.
“As a playing group, it’s out of our control what happens. We’ll just work with what we’ve got.”
Seibold is ready to come to the Broncos and Souths will happily release him, so the final impediment now is Bennett.
Morris is likely to offer Bennett a compensation deal, but the 68-year-old won’t cop any cut-price arrangement.
It means Brisbane face an expensive $1 million-plus payout, when you factor in Bennett’s assistants and Seibold’s salary, or the supercoach stays put for one final, turbulent season.
When the madness ends is anyone’s guess, but Bennett’s actions must surely be the final strand of evidence for Brisbane bosses to pull the trigger — at any cost — and bring Seibold to town.
Only then will sanity return to Red Hill.
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Originally published as Wayne Bennett forced to watch Broncos training from his office as coaching farce drags on
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