Cook’s numbers plummet under Bennett

The coaching feud is obvious. The fine print to Brisbane v Souths is the drastic fall in Damien Cook’s numbers under Bennett.

Run, rabbit, run. Rabbitohs hooker Damien Cook’s run metres have plummeted under coach Wayne Bennett Picture: Getty Images

Two things in the NRL are repetitive enough to make you scream.

Firstly, a Roosters player nodding sagely, chanting Om Mani Padme Hum and saying Sonny Bill Williams’ presence at Moore Park will inspire everyone to be a more enlightened human being.

And secondly, a Rabbitohs player saying he doesn’t feel particularly sorry for the former Rabbitohs coach who is having what Queen Elizabeth would call, in Latin, a year of horribleness up at the Broncos.

Wayne Bennett’s Rabbitohs play Anthony Seibold’s Broncos on Friday night in the next instalment of the feud that developed when Bennett was sacked by the Broncos so they could pinch Seibold from the Rabbitohs. Bennett turned around and joined the Rabbitohs, clearly pissed off with the Broncos and Seibold, who became wildly pissed off at him for being so pissed off at them.

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When the Rabbitohs beat the Broncos last year, cameras captured Bennett doing a celebratory hokie-pokie in the dressingroom. To cut a long story short, presently everybody hates each other. No Om. No Mani. No Padme. No Hum. Good stuff.

And yet we’ve been through this before, the bad blood between Bennett and Seibold, back in Round 2 when the world was a different place, before the plague hit, before the Broncos became so bloody hopeless. Friday, March 20, Suncorp Stadium – Broncos 22, Rabbitohs 18. Imagine!

Back then, and now, the on-field developments became more interesting than the conflict between the coaches, in particular one statistical oddity of the Broncos’ triumph. The speediest and most opportunistic of dummy-halves, Cook, made only one run in 80 minutes for the grand total of four metres. It was bizarre.

The curious case of Damien Cook under Bennett has grown more curious. His breakout season was in 2018, under Seibold. Since then, under Bennett, his bread and butter, metres gained, has been only half as good.

In the first 12 rounds of 2018, for Seibold, he made 1131m. In the last two years under Bennett, sampling the same rounds, he’s made 547m and 648m. The post-lockdown change to the ruck rule was expected to make untouchable the fleet-footed Cook but he’s stalled enough for NSW heavyweight Peter Sterling to question his right to another automatic NSW Origin jersey. Come Friday night, alongside the return of David Fifita for the Broncos, in the first of his training runs for next year’s debut at Gold Coast, the most intrigue centres on the halved numbers of the Rabbitohs’ Test dummy-half.

Asked to assess his season, Cook says: “I’ve been keeping in touch with Wayne and making sure he’s happy with what I’m doing. There’s obviously been things in the past I’ve done but I feel like other parts of my game are really growing, good game management around the middle … I feel like my defence has been quite strong. I think with Latrell (Mitchell) coming in, sometimes when he’s on, you just have to make sure you give him the ball. There’s probably some opportunities I’d like to take sometimes but if he’s there, I’ve got to make sure I share the role there.

“Why wouldn’t you give the ball to Latrell? As long as I pick my times and back myself, make sure I give early ball and good service, I can do my job that way as a hooker.”

On his old mate Seibold, whom he’s always credited with sparking his leap into NSW and Australia jerseys, Cook adds: “He’s been through a bit of a tough period up there, but it’s a tight competition.

“We probably should have won a few more games to be well and truly in the eight. Here we are in eighth position. There’s a couple of teams sitting down the bottom of the ladder that are still quality football sides.

“We have to make sure we respect them – but I don’t feel sorry for other teams. We can only worry about what we’re doing.”

How will it end? With Bennett doing another dressing-room hokie pokie? “There’s a bit of a rivalry there,” Cook says. “I love that part of it. Make it a bit of a grudge match to pump the game up even more. It’s what the fans want and I’m all for it.”