Wayne Bennett will revel in the Rabbitohs burrow

What will happen when the NRL’s greatest coach mixes with the game’s most successful club?

Wayne Bennett, left, coaching Tom Burgess, right, and Sam Burgess may soon be an almost daily occurrence. Picture: Getty Images

A train from the Blue Mountains to Redfern. A bus to the home ground of the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Andrew Denton takes a front-row seat in the old wooden grandstand. He recalls the balls being fat and brown. And he remembers the exact Saturday arvo he became a Souths’ man for life.

It’s 1978. Denton is 18. Bobby McCarthy has returned to the Rabbitohs for the final year of his career. He’s having a gallop in the twos. Paul Sait’s first-graders are seated behind Denton. He likes that the top-graders are watching the reserves.

Elderly Aboriginal women grab some nearby pews. They take over. Their language is earthy. Shameless. Hilarious. Honest. They’re giving it to the refs, the opposition, their own players. “You wouldn’t miss so many tackles if you spent a bit less time in the pub, you fat slob.’’ That sort of thing. Denton knows right then that this is his club. For all time.

He’s been going back ever since. He’s told me this tale while standing on Redfern Oval after the 2014 premiership win. He’s cried, too. Those big old glasses of his have needed windscreen wipers.

It’s struck then, and ever since, that Rabbitohs people are different. They’re the battlers around Eveleigh Street. They’re the high-flyers like Denton and Ray Martin, who speaks about the club as he may his own child. You’ve got Russell Crowe. George Piggins. Clive Churchill. John Sattler. Albert Clift. Larger than life figures, and invisible creatures. All of them sweating on the Rabbitohs. I know Souths’ supporters who don’t follow the NRL. Just Souths.

In Court 21C of the Federal Court, when the South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club has fought News Limited through the Trade Practices Act in the fallout to the Super League war, Tom Hughes, QC, told the court that Souths supporters are “a particular class of people’’.

He said they’re the most extreme tribal loyalists in the game. One of these supporters, Myra Hagarty, told the ABC during Souths’ absence from the comp: “My daughter, Linda, she’s said, ‘There’s a change in you. I can see a change. You’ve got nothing to talk about now. I know it’s hurting you.’ I just stay home now. I just worry about it, about not being in it, because it’s so much a part of us. You’ve got to be a Souths person to understand.”

The Rabbitohs’ history is phenomenal. Complex. Tough. Give it about 10 more days and they’ll be embarking on another chapter no one’s seen coming: the arrival at Redfern of Wayne Bennett. He may ride a horse into town. Start calling everyone pilgrims. It’s a remarkable development. Fascinating.

When one of the oldest clubs in the comp is joining forces with the oldest coach, when the most successful franchise in rugby league history is teaming up with the winning-est mentor, who fits in with whom? Benny from The Block. It beggars belief, really. Two irrepressible forces aren’t colliding. They’re colluding.

Bennett was back at the Broncos’ helm yesterday but for how long? He did his best to avoid the cameras, sidestepping media on arrival and then using decoy vehicles before hiding in the back of a car when leaving Broncos headquarters later in the afternoon.

Prediction? Bennett will revel in Souths’ culture These are his kind of people. Resilient. Hard-nosed. Survivors. He may end up winning the four-ball Stableford on Monday mornings at Eastlakes. He’ll read the banners and nod his approval. They could just as easily be referring to him. Never Give Up. Till I Die. Pride Of The League. Glory, Glory, Baby.

For coaches, it doesn’t get bigger than Bennett. For clubs, I think it gets no bigger than Souths. What a merger it will be. He’s likely to walk into Redfern Oval within a fortnight. Regardless of the club’s new era of ultra-professionalism and prosperity, there’s still a degree of us against the world. You’re Souths, or you can get stuffed. Bennett will feel right at home.