Why Dolphins coach Wayne Bennett ‘simply cannot be trusted’

A brutal Wayne Bennett truth has emerged with questions being asked about the coach’s suspicious knowledge of the NRL’s “state secrets”.

Wayne Bennett. Picture: Patrick Woods.

You can find many familiar threads running through Wayne Bennett’s sparkling CV. There’s rampant success, RM Williams dress shirts, and Darius Boyd just to name a few.

But if there’s one constant shining brightest throughout his glittering career, it’s his penchant for stickin’ it up the haters.

From the moment the 1988 Broncos debuted with a 44-10 romp over then-premiers Manly, Bennett has made an art form of silencing the doubters and flipping the bird in the applecart’s face — especially if the applecart is from south of the Tweed.

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Whether heisting NSWRL trophies, pinching unwinnable Origins or ghosting press conferences, this surly Queensland beanpole has not only made it his life’s mission to win, but also to puncture Sydney hubris wherever possible.

Sunday’s emphatic win by the Redcliffe Dolphins was his latest ‘ambush’, a term commonly used to describe his underdog muggings even though its redundant because an ambush, by definition, is to be attacked by surprise.

With a squad of journeymen and off-cuts, Bennett delivered another predictable masterclass to blow away the elitist Sydney Roosters, in the process tactically defrocking his counterpart Trent Robinson.

From start to finish, the whole afternoon was Classic Wayne.

Written-off in the lead-up, he unleashed a deadly sneak-attack to sink the Sydney glamour boys before retiring to drip-feed the pigeons at the post-match presser with a mix of quips, burns and monosyllabic grunts.

Wayne Bennett used up his budget of one smile per-season early this year. Picture: Patrick Woods.

In fact, it was a game of Bennett Bingo right down to his method of victory, with the supercoach savaging the triple premiership-winning Robinson – a chain-smoking francophile perfectly embodying Sin City aristocracy – with a typically-savvy Queensland strategy:

They bashed ‘em.

Lead by a re-born Felise Kaufusi, the Dolphins assaulted the superstar Roosters pack with a series of bone-rattlers and liver shots that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a medieval Mad Monday.

When the full-time siren sounded to herald an unforgettable 28-18 triumph, everyone was in agreement: Bennett had bait-and-switched us again.

Will he ever tire of this stuff? And more importantly, when will he stop picking on us New South Welshmen?

Besides his stint at Souths — and the Dragons’ 2010 premiership which he admittedly rectified by leaving the roster in disarray — Bennett’s Wikipedia page is awash with grand-scale acts of interstate larceny.

Swindling the 1992 NSWRL title from fifth place. Doctoring Brian Smith’s tip sheet in 1993. The Allan Langer reboot in 2001, and the unwinnable Origin decider in 2020. And his magnum opus, callously abandoning Newcastle to drown in a pile of back-ended contracts in 2014.

Even for the old fox, this was a special one. Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images.

Personally, I’m certain the Redcliffe Heist will not be the last of it.

Why? Because as a non-smoking, non-gambler teetotaller, Bennett simply cannot be trusted. He knows so many of our state secrets, he must own TikTok.

Many experts tipped Bennett to finally hang-up the clipboard in his 70’s, but that’s almost 30 years ago now. He’s still outrunning fresh rookies in time trials when he should be at home trawling Gumtree through a smart device with the font and volume on 120.

As such, I’m tipping this snake charmer to end his career sometime around the year 2090. Here he will retire to a cushy Coaching Director role with a career boasting more fleecings than a Nigerian email scam.

By then he’ll have pocketed another 30 Origin shields, reneged on another seven coaching offers from Nick Politis, and taken the Dragons from rags-to-riches-to-rags again across two more generations of Gasniers.