‘He wouldn’t return my calls’: Why the Dolphins are swimming against the tide

Wayne Bennett has been around too long and coached too many players to have his heart broken when a superstar signs with another club.

But he was given an early portent into just how tricky building the roster at the Dolphins would be when New Zealand hooker Brandon Smith stopped taking his calls.

A premiership winner at the Melbourne Storm, Smith became hot property in late 2021 when rival clubs were allowed to negotiate with him.

Bennett zeroed in and, after some healthy negotiation, Smith agreed to terms on a deal worth a hefty $900,000 per season.

It was a significant victory for the fledgling club, which had only been admitted to the NRL for the 2023 season weeks before Bennett and Smith met.

There was one last hurdle, however: Smith had also agreed to meet with the Roosters, chaired by the all-powerful Sydney businessman Nick Politis.

“Brandon said, ‘I just have to talk to the Roosters’,” Bennett recalls. “I’d rung him the day before and he said, ‘Mate, I’m good as gold. No problems.’ Then another deal was done and suddenly he was a Rooster. He wouldn’t take my phone calls afterwards.”

Smith described the situation as an experience he could have handled better.

Wayne Bennett and rugged forward Tom Gilbert.Credit: Dan Peled

“Yeah, he’s right,” Brandon Smith said. “It wasn’t my proudest moment, I liked what the Dolphins were offering but after they didn’t sign any of the other players that they were talking to I decided the Roosters were a better option for me.”

The Dolphins are based at Redcliffe in the Moreton Bay region north of Brisbane and are the first new team to join the NRL in 16 years. When they were admitted, it was widely assumed that once Bennett, the most successful coach in the NRL, signed on the players would follow. Instead, the last 18 months have been a constant stream of rejection.

After Smith reneged, Tino Fa’asuamaleaui, Harry Grant, Jahrome Hughes, Kalyn Ponga, Reece Walsh, Patrick Carrigan, Dylan Edwards, Ben Hunt, Cody Walker, Latrell Mitchell and Cameron Munster met with Bennett but, ultimately, took upgraded contracts at their existing clubs or signed elsewhere.

Instead of being rugby league’s shiny new plaything, the Dolphins have become a trumped-up stalking horse to make rich footballers even richer and there are grave fears for their future.

That’s the glass-half-empty view, the default position for a snarky old queen like rugby league.

New Roosters hooker Brandon Smith, who initially promised Wayne Bennett he would sign with the Dolphins.Credit: Getty

The Disney version is the Dolphins are well-organised and well-funded, backed by a huge leagues club with net assets of more than $100 million, have a sprawling junior nursery and are about to begin an exciting new chapter of their 76-year existence helmed by the most decorated coach of the modern era.

Former Roosters captain and Immortal Arthur Beetson started his senior career with Redcliffe in 1964 and finished with them in 1981 before coaching them the following year.

He was calling for the Dolphins to be included in the NRL more than 20 years ago, revealing in his fiery 2004 autobiography Big Artie how he lobbied then chief executive David Gallop.

Eastern Suburbs legend Arthur Beetson began his rugby league career with Redcliffe.Credit: Fairfax

“Maybe one day in my lifetime there can be a Roosters-Redcliffe grand final,” wrote Beetson, who died of a heart attack in 2011.

It may not be a grand final - yet - but Beetson’s two beloved teams will meet in the first round at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday, March 5.

The match is happening after ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys flew to the US in February 2020 to ask News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch for permission to introduce a second Brisbane team.

Just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, V’landys and commercial officer Andrew Abdo (now the game’s chief executive) met with Murdoch in Los Angeles.

As one of the game’s broadcasters, as well as the majority shareholder of the Broncos, News Corp’s approval was essential in bringing in a 17th team. Murdoch, incidentally, is a Broncos tragic.

‘We’re really focussed on investment in grassroots ... The top doesn’t work without the bottom.’

Dolphins official Terry Reader

Murdoch gave the nod and, on October 2021, the Dolphins were awarded the licence ahead of the Brisbane Firehawks (Brisbane Easts) and the Ipswich Jets.

It’s been speculated the Dolphins won because that’s what the Broncos (read: News Corp) wanted. The argument goes that the Dolphins are less of a threat to their fan and junior base as the other bids.

Closer to the mark would be the club’s financial strength - a point V’landys has said repeatedly - although Brisbane Easts is equally prosperous.

Either way, the Dolphins’ inclusion allowed the game to secure an additional $100 million in broadcast revenue from News Corp in exchange for an additional match per week as well as more high-rating Broncos matches on Foxtel. (Channel Nine, publisher of this masthead, holds the free-to-air rights to the game).

The Dolphins’ impressive bid was headed by former Broncos marketing man Terry Reader, who also preached to the commission the importance of fostering young talent. “We’re really focussed on investment in grassroots, game academies, from Rockhampton to Brisbane,” he says. “The top doesn’t work without the bottom.”

Dolphins five-eighth Anthony Milford.Credit: Dan Peled

Within two weeks, Reader secured his biggest signing in Bennett, although the veteran coach had been talking to each of the bid teams for months.

The November 1 trade deadline, the time when rival clubs can start talking to off-contract players, was only a month away, but Bennett’s focus was on getting the right staff.

He had gone through all this before, having been the inaugural coach of the Broncos in 1988, but the game is vastly different now. Within weeks, the Dolphins secured recruitment guru Peter O’Sullivan.

As Bennett and O’Sullivan started building the roster, Reader was focused on building the brand.

The decision to drop Redcliffe from its name has divided opinion in the local area. Some wanted the Moreton Bay Dolphins, others the Brisbane Dolphins. None of them stuck.

Problematic to any name change was the club’s catchment area, which takes in North Brisbane, Moreton Bay, the Sunshine Coast, and some of Central Queensland. Also, the Redcliffe Dolphins are still playing in the Queensland Cup state league. To avoid any confusion, the NRL team is simply known as the Dolphins.

As Reader explains in the soon-to-be-released Stan documentary Dawn of the Dolphins, the club wanted to follow a similar branding strategy as South Sydney, whose white or black bunny has become iconic. A simple white dolphin logo was created while gold has been introduced to the club’s traditional colours of red and white.

Wayne Bennett remains one of the NRL’s great coaches – and characters.Credit: Dan Peled

“We’re a wonderful club with great foundations, but we went from one staff member to 60 inside 12 months, then we transitioned into a football club,” Reader says. “The game gave us nothing: no money, no support, no concessions.”

It’s been argued the Dolphins should have been given an extra year to build their roster. “That’s bullshit,” Bennett growls. “I couldn’t go through another year of waiting.”

Queensland border closures in late 2021 made it difficult to fly prospective players in and out of Brisbane to look at the club. Storm players Felise Kaufusi and brothers Jesse and Kenny Bromwich were given guided tours of the facilities via Zoom.

Kaufusi was the first player signed with Jesse Bromwich secured soon after. Kenny agreed without much lobbying from his older brother.

Bennett wanted Jesse as captain, instructing him to focus less on his own game and worry about being a leader. “Talking to Wayne and Terry lit a fire inside me about trying something different,” Bromwich says. “To be a part of history was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Dolphins captain Jesse Bromwich during a training session in Redcliffe.Credit: Dan Peled

The three former Storm players, along with hard-headed youngsters like Ray Stone and Tom Gilbert, provide a strong and experienced forward pack, but they look decidedly thin in the key play-making positions after failing to land a genuine marquee signing.

“I can’t even focus on that now,” Bromwich says. “I have to focus [on] doing the best job we can with the players we’ve got. If we start thinking outside that, it won’t be any good for us.”

Bennett has admitted recruitment has been harder than he thought, but he’s more concerned about paying players what they’re worth, not carrying players on the salary cap who can’t live up to the size of his contract.

“There’s always another footballer out there,” he says. “Am I disappointed that I missed out on Smith and Munster? Of course, I am. But you have to bide your time.”

The Dolphins come in at an interesting time with the Broncos looking less like the powerhouse they once were under Bennett by the day. Once unstoppable in September, the Broncos haven’t played in the last three finals series.

When Bennett joined the Broncos in late 1987, there was no salary cap, the mechanism that limits how much money clubs can spend on players to equalise talent across the competition. That’s the theory, anyway.

“But now, with the cap, you can hold on to the ones you want,” Bennett explains. “There’s a small margin between your offer and the other club. You can’t pick them up on the cheap or because a club can’t afford them. People have also forgotten about the marquee player. How many marquee players are there in the game? It’s probably 10 to 12. There are 17 clubs vying for those players. It’s only natural you will miss out. The Tigers would love one, we would love one, but they aren’t out there. We’re not paying a million for a player who hasn’t done the job.”

There are doubts about the roster and there are doubts about Bennett. At 73, does he still have the music in him?

Earlier this month, former Broncos international Wendell Sailor, who considers Bennett a father figure, said on Triple M that Bennett had “lost his mojo”. A few weeks later, Bennett was criticised by another former Bronco, Gorden Tallis, after he didn’t attend a pre-season match in Cairns because he was coaching other players at Redcliffe the following morning.

Bennett laughed off both remarks as did the club’s social media department, which posted to Instagram a mocked-up wanted poster.

“Wendell said I’d lost my mojo,” Bennett says. “So, I’ve been looking for it. That’s why I didn’t go to Cairns. I was looking for my mojo.”

Let’s hope he finds it and holds on tight. The Dolphins will need it.

The three-part Stan Original Documentary Series Dawn of the Dolphins premieres weekly from March 6, on Stan.

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