Paul Kent: Wayne Bennett and Phil Gould face off in the recruitment race for 2023

Two of the most influential figures in league are set to define the NRL’s new era as they jostle for the signatures of some of the game’s biggest stars. Paul Kent analyses the recruiting stoush.

Old adversaries Wayne Bennett and Phil Gould are in a battle for supremacy in the 2023 free agency market. Artwork: Boo Bailey

Some years back your old Sparring Partner here wrote a column about the two most powerful men in rugby league, the types who wielded power with something to border on admiration.

One was a solid-set fellow, with a face kind of like a mudslide, whose contacts in the game counted the likes of James Packer and Nick Politis and beginning there and going down he exhibited the kind of the power that could end or promote careers.

His closest friend was Wayne Beavis, then the most powerful agent in the game, he was on first call contact with then Channel 9 boss David Leckie, counted David Gyngell as a friend, and was forever owed by the surviving ARL clubs for fighting the good fight.

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Paul Kent's 2002 column on Wayne Bennett and Phil Gould.

When the Super League war ended Kerry Packer felt such a debt to Phil Gould that he wrote him a cheque for $1 million and spun it across the table. This was in the 1990s, when $1 million took you a long way on the bus.

Gould got a cheque and so did Bob Fulton, who relayed the story here.

A lot has happened since then, but Gould still knows how to wield power better than most in the game.

The other power figure was more slightly built, broad but angular like a spinnaker turned upside down, and his power was the equal of Gould, but also the opposite.

Wayne Bennett was running the Broncos at the time and his circle of power included the Murdoch family, specifically Lachlan, and News Corp chairman John Hartigan, as well as the likes of Jack Gibson and Ron Massey and their thick contact books.

Bennett had no special relationship with a player agent, preferring to have them all jostling for position, but he had the ear of the Queensland Rugby League and League headquarters and a fawning media, and he used them all regularly.

Given they were the same but opposite, competing for the same small spot that was big enough for only one, they often had a hard time getting on, although there was a certain respect.

A lot has happened since then.

Bennett spectacularly blew up his relationship with News Corp, not the first time he left the Broncos but the second, while Gould has recently rebounded from his departure at Penrith, where he had a sweet gig, to take a similar role at Canterbury.

Wayne Bennett and Phil Gould go at it again. Picture: Boo Bailey

So here they are again, all these years later, still competing for the same piece of turf.

This time it is the 2023 player market.

It began when the Homeless Dolphins hired Bennett recently to lead their club into the 2023 season, their inaugural season and one many hope will continue for a long time to come.

Bennett was the perfect choice.

He was the architect behind Brisbane’s entry to the NSW Rugby League competition in 1988, setting up the club and finding immediate and lasting success as he put in place a template that saw the Broncos dominate for decades.

By hiring Bennett the Dolphins, of no fixed address, showed they were also after fast results.

The differences between now and then were irrelevant.

Back then the Broncos’ beginning had the likes of established stars Wally Lewis, Allan Langer, Gene Miles, Greg Conescu, Greg Dowling, Chris Johns, Brian Niebling, Mick Hancock already playing Origin, or about to be, and all waiting for the chance to play in the bigger Sydney competition.

There is no untapped talent pool this time around.

Regardless, Bennett was hired as much for his ability to recruit as for what he would bring as a coach.

It has got off to a slow start.

Dolphins coach Wayne Bennett. Picture: Liam Kidston.

This week the Dolphins missed another couple of key signings when Pat Carrigan extended his deal at Brisbane while Christian Welch did the same at Melbourne.

It came after Tiny Fa'asuamaleaui, Reagan Campbell-Gillard, Harry Grant and Cody Walker all rejected the Dolphins to remain at their current clubs, leaving the Dolphins one marquee short of a marquee signing.

It is enough that some have questioned whether Bennett has lost some of his gloss, the Pied Piper effect failing to spark a signings avalanche. Say that at your peril, it says here.

Still, down in Sydney, Gould has gone about reinvigorating Canterbury’s roster with the kind of gusto he is known for, which will not have been missed by the Dolphins.

With Matt Burton and Brent Naden signed for next season he beat off Bennett last week to capture Viliame Kikau’s signature for season 2023.

In between he signed Josh Addo-Carr, Paul Vaughn, Matt Dufty and Tevita Pangai Jr.

This week he began the work on Canterbury’s spine when he signed Parramatta’s Reed Mahoney for 2023.

Already it is clear the Bulldogs will be unrecognisable in 2023, the season the Dolphins debut.

Gould and Bennett, two old adversaries, are now going to head to head for what is essentially the same player market and Gould has taken the early lead.

Kikau was supposedly a Dolphins’ target, as was Mahoney for one small moment, but both were lost to the Bulldogs.

Phil Gould has taken an early lead in the 2023 recruitment race. Picture: NRL Photos

The Dolphins are now focusing on Brandon Smith, who just this week walked off the golf course with several Sydney Roosters players and looms as Politis’s key target for 2023.

It begins to raise the question about where Bennett goes, and the Dolphins themselves, if the grand plan fails to materialise.

What if Bennett fails to recruit a top heavy roster, as the Dolphins hoped?

Where he always preached from the Jack Gibson School of Coaching, “always leave a club in a better place than when you got there”, that philosophy got wobbly wheels at Newcastle where he ended up sacking himself, basically admitting he no longer had the appetite to go through a rebuild.

Since then Bennett transformed himself into a gunslinger, a hired gun brought in to apply the finishing touch to a team’s premiership charge in a roster that was already mature.

He nearly did it at Brisbane and nearly did it again at South Sydney, taking both to losing grand finals.

Now, without options, he might not have a choice but to return to coaching life as a development coach.

How that news reaches the Dolphins remains to be seen.

What is sure is that Gould has taken the early points for season 2023, but don’t write off Bennett yet.

On Friday the Dolphins finally struck, announcing Felise Kaufusi and his travelling elbows as the club’s first big-name signing.

It was a significant first-up effort.

EELS BOSS BRISTLES AT ‘UNDERPAYMENT’ CLAIMS

Paramatta chairman Sean McElduff took umbrage at suggestions the Eels were low-balling players and then offered a curious validation.

“Let’s come to the lowballing,” McElduff said to Brent Read earlier this week.

“To suggest we are lowballing is absurd. We have a retention strategy and we spend 100 per cent of the salary cap.”

What the chairman seems to have missed is that there is a difference between spending the cap, and spending it well.

Salary caps are all about value for money.

So given the Eels are spending all their cap, and still losing quality players like they have in recent weeks — compounded by the loss of Isaiah Papali’i and Marata Niukore after Reed Mahoney signed with Canterbury this week — it might be fair to wonder that if the Eels are paying the full amount of the salary cap, is it money well spent?

That is the query on the Eels’ recruitment committee, and whether they are doing a good job.

Sometimes, they don’t know what they don’t know.

Mahoney left the club for and extra $100,000 a season, and an extra year.

The rough formula used at clubs is that players will stay at their club for somewhere around $50,000 less a season. More than that and they are in a fight.

Parramatta took some getting to finally offer $500,000 a season, about $100,000 more than their original offer when the Eels lowballed Mahoney, despite their objections.

True, it could be argued Canterbury had more need for Mahoney than Parramatta, given their rosters, and so was prepared to pay more, but one quality Bulldogs boss Phil Gould has shown is the discipline to not pay above market value for players.

Originally published as Paul Kent: Wayne Bennett and Phil Gould face off in the recruitment race for 2023