Paul Kent: Wayne Bennett’s poor record against Craig Bellamy means Penrith or Manly need to beat Melbourne

Styles make fights in the NRL and Craig Bellamy has it all over Wayne Bennett. Despite having the most flamboyant attack, defence will decide South Sydney’s premiership hopes, PAUL KENT writes.

South Sydney NRL training vision. Wayne Bennett pictured. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Like happens in the fight game, styles also make fights in the NRL.

Wayne Bennett has known this a long time and also has the comfort of knowing there is a way through it although, right now, it hardly makes for peaceful sleeping.

Back when Bennett was a young coach still working on his crooked grin, he found terrible trouble beating Warren Ryan in everything except maintaining a stony silence which, as the grizzled veterans on the league beat had to admit, was a formidable effort.

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‘The Wok’ could turn a bumbling posse of league writers to stone with a single quip, and Bennett worked hard to replicate him.

Bennett came into the game in the late 1980s when defence dominated. By way of reference, Ryan lost the 1986 grand final without a try being scored.

Craig Bellamy, Wayne Bennett, Des Hasler and Ivan Cleary. Digital art: Boo Bailey

And Bennett had terrible trouble beating Ryan’s teams back then. While he took a win with Canberra over Canterbury in his first season 1987, the year the Raiders made an unlikely grand final, it would be three more years before Bennett would get his next victory over Ryan and things began to turn.

What happened in between is something Bennett has kept closely guarded since and which Ryan, who heard of it many years back, is still trying to discover who.

Bennett sat down with a former player under Ryan and, in a ploy Ryan would have appreciated, they moved a bunch of balls around on a snooker table as the ex-player coached Bennett through how Ryan’s defence worked.

From that moment on, Bennett’s success against Ryan turned. He went from a 1-6 record to 6-4 to finish with a flourish.

Now, with South Sydney and Melbourne, along with Penrith, gapping the field in the list of premiership contenders, styles make fights all over again.

Bennett has beaten Craig Bellamy’s Melbourne team just four times since 2010, a total of 22 games, and, overall, Bellamy leads 29-10 in match-ups against his former master.

Bellamy simply dominates Bennett as a coach, which says tremendous things about Bellamy’s ability to coach a football team.

Manly’s Des Hasler is the only coach with a winning record against Craig Bellamy. Picture: Mark Evans/Getty Images

Bellamy’s Melbourne team, as unfashionable as bell bottoms compared with previous team lists he has put out, achieved one of the great records Thursday night when it equalled Eastern Suburbs’ record of 19 straight wins in 1975.

By way of records, all that is left for the Storm is to close out the season with two more wins to eclipse St George’s unbeaten record of 20 straight games in 1959, which included a draw, and then go on to win the premiership as both those teams did.

The considered thinking is that for Bennett to add to his record seven premierships somebody else must beat Melbourne on the way through.

Which basically means Ivan Cleary at Penrith or Des Hasler at Manly.

Cleary fares slightly better against Bellamy, having won 11 of their 28 games. Yet Hasler, who has a losing record against Bennett, 11-19, is the only coach with a winning record against Bellamy, 17-15.

Styles make fights.

That Melbourne continue to dominate the NRL raises the question whether Bellamy, just as many were prepared to admit Bennett’s longevity might have him succeeding Jack Gibson as the best ever, is the greatest coach of them all.

Wayne Bennett needs to find a way to outfox Craig Bellamy. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Gibson is considered the godfather of coaches and is hard to shift.

He was the man who made coaching important. Before him coaches were given a team by selectors and got them fit during the week while the captain most often ran the team and what primitive tactics they employed.

Gibson made the coach the most important person at the club. To prove it he took success with him, improving teams when he got there and leaving them in strong condition when he left.

Ryan brought science to the game. The foundations for the modern blueprint were put in place by Ryan and, for a time, his teams were impossible to beat.

Bennett leaned heavily on the Gibson school and the form guide for his claim to being the greatest was driven by his longevity. Gibson would stay three seasons and leave just before he fell out of favour while Ryan would stay three seasons and leave just after.

Bennett coached Brisbane for 20 years before he became a hired gun but his overall record, 35 seasons without a year off, was just beginning to put a little shade on those before him.

But then along came Bellamy, now in his 19th season at Melbourne and having signed on to extend his stay.

Craig Bellamy will coach the Storm beyond 2021. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Unlike Bennett, who has always claimed players make coaches, and who always had the players to prove this was right, Bellamy could seemingly pull a bunch of drunks out of the early opener and still coach them to victory.

Thursday night’s team against Gold Coast was without five regular first graders. At various times this season he has sent out a team without key players yet they barely suffer a hiccup.

Beyond this the Storm do not have one star who was bought, as a star, from a rival club.

Josh Addo-Carr and Ryan Papenhuyzen were both unwanted at Wests Tigers, Dale Finucane was unable to regularly push his way into the Canterbury starting line-up, Nicho Hynes excited no one at Manly, Jahrome Hughes tried and failed as a fullback at two clubs before Bellamy turned him into one of the competition’s top halfbacks.

It is a formidable achievement which, privately, Bennett seems to have acknowledged.

Styles make fights.

Since Souths’ 56-12 loss to Penrith midway through the year, a fortnight after Storm beat them 50-0, the Rabbitohs have gone from averaging nearly 23 points against a game to nearly 15, an improvement of two tries per contest.

Old lessons, it shows, are still the best lessons.

All those years ago Bennett was shown how defence wins games and, despite being known as an attacking coach, and the Rabbitohs possessing the most flamboyant attack in the NRL, it is defence that will decide their premiership.

Craig Bellamy enjoys a 29-10 career record over Wayne Bennett. Picture: AAP/Dan Peled

SHOT SHOT

Any sport you care to mention is only as rich as its history.

It is a belief respected and acknowledged constantly in American sports where they realise that, without proper celebration of their past, the future is limited.

Just this week we saw the New York Yankees take on the Chicago White Sox in a regular season game that replicated the movie Field Of Dreams and the manner and class which Major League Baseball pulled it off was a lesson to our own sporting codes.

One sporting club here in Australia that replicates the kind of gravitas the Yankees have in America is the St George Dragons, who possess one for those never-to-be-broken records of 11 straight premierships and have a swagger about them few, if any, clubs in Australia can match.

Absolute chills. #MLBatFieldofDreamspic.twitter.com/JsejH3OsWI

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) August 12, 2021

Through the talented author Geoff Armstrong, the Dragons are about to release a two volume history of the club called Spirit Of The Red V to celebrate the Dragons’ 100th season.

Volume one has just landed on my desk and it is hard to describe how impressive it is.

It takes in the years 1921-1967 and is a goldmine for details on the Dragons’ history.

My favourite is a snippet from Rugby League News on July 26, 1958 on a President’s Cup junior named Reg Gasnier:

“Gasnier was adjudged one of the two best players for St George in all grades — first-grade fullback Brian Graham was the other — to win an Onoto pen and pencil set. He also received three other awards — a Westmont track suit, part of football boots and £2 cash.

“More will be heard of him.”

They got that right.

Originally published as Paul Kent: Wayne Bennett’s poor record against Craig Bellamy means Penrith or Manly need to beat Melbourne