Wayne Bennett’s incredible act amid Rabbitohs’ Latrell Mitchell and Cameron Murray disaster

As the Rabbitohs lick their wounds from a shock double injury blow, Wayne Bennett’s incredible act came to light showing why the club will be just fine.

Latrell Mitchell was still limping from the field at Rabbitohs HQ early Wednesday morning, hand clutching at that troublesome right hammy, when the old bloke watching on with little expression, and less panic, started earning his $3 million.

Which is why Wayne Bennett is here, right?

And why, at 75, he isn’t only the oldest coach in rugby league, or the winningest, but now the first man to outlast over 100 rivals.

Which just on that last one, isn’t exactly the milestone men get remembered by.

Nor the type of mark paraded in NRL hype reels.

Yet following that most recent demise of South Sydney’s Jason Demetriou -- which, ironically, is also what brings Bennett back south to Sydney -- it can now be revealed a whopping 101 head coaches have been and gone out of the game during Bennett’s reign.

Yep, ONE HUNDRED AND ONE.

All of them for different reasons, and with different legacies.

But still gone, nonetheless.

Although before diving too deep into that illustrious roll call, come stand inside the snap huddle Bennett called his Rabbitohs players into early Wednesday morning.

When still onfield, and with training just done at South Sydney’s sprawling Centre of Excellence, the coach wanted something known in those last minutes before his Bunnies became backpage news.

“Don’t worry,” Bennett started, his eyes moving around a group of young men with reason for exactly that.

Wayne Bennett has calmed Souths following a double injury blow. Image: Getty

Especially given that now missing from among this huddle wasn’t only Mitchell – aka Mr $1.2 million -- but South Sydney captain Cameron Murray, who might earn a tick less but could give no more.

As part of a craziness which seemed over in minutes, because it was, both Mitchell and Murray were taken from the field, then rushed to hospital for scans, after both suffered injury in the same defensive drill.

According to those present, it was Murray who fell first, and when simply pushing up in defence.

With the undeniable Bunnies heartbeat then assisted from the field with what was quickly diagnosed as an Achilles rupture, possibly ending his season.

Then moments later, it was Mitchell’s hamstring twinging badly enough to have him, first, removed for treatment, then scans and now ruled out for up to eight weeks.

Or in NRL terms, an eternity.

Cameron Murray ruptured his Achilles at training. Image: NRL PHOTOS

But still there in that huddle, Bennett reminded his men how all this was nothing new.

Or not for him.

Not at 75.

A message rugby league’s oldest coach would deliver again within the hour, this time while sat around a table with Souths CEO Blake Solly, football manager Jason Clark and longtime executive Mark Ellison.

“Don’t worry,” Bennett started again, “I’ve been through this before …”

With the coach then taking his small audience all the way back to those 2015 Brisbane Broncos, when it was Darius Boyd’s Achilles that ruptured during pre-season, only days out from Christmas.

“And Darius,” he said, “was back in five months”.

So just like that, Project Murray was given a July timeframe.

Same as Bennett, simply by mentioning the year, also reminded all of Souths HQ how the Broncos that same year went all the way to an NRL decider – with only Johnathan Thurston’s Golden Point field goal denying them.

“So immediately,” Solly will tell you later that same day, “everyone had a focus.

“It was ‘OK, let’s get on with this’.”

Which again, is why Bennett is back.

Latrell Mitchell will miss the first few weeks of the NRL season with a calf strain.. Image: NRL

Why after South Sydney suffered through the annus horribilis that was 2024 -- and finished behind everyone not named Wests Tigers -- Solly, widely regarded among the game’s best bosses, went and snared that ageing head coach who, were he an NRL club, would be fifth oldest.

Although re-signing a seventysomething, it isn’t exactly in the CEO playbook is it?

“No there’s us, and the United States,” the Bunnies boss grins, referencing the hyped return of President Donald Trump.

A fella who, at 78, isn’t only being courted for the upcoming NRL launch in Las Vegas, but also appears to have borrowed his dance style straight from Bennett’s own dressingroom jigs.

Elsewhere, NFL fans will also remind you how Pete Carroll has just signed for three seasons with the Las Vegas Raiders -- at 74, also set to become their oldest head coach.

Like Bennett, Carroll is seen as a steadying hand for the Raiders franchise.

Enjoys the same love from his players, too.

Wayne Bennett will be the Rabbitohs’ coach for at least season 2025 through to 2027. Picture: Supplied

With the two legends also sharing not only an insatiable enthusiasm and work ethic, but famed personal fitness levels – with Carroll, even in recent years with Seattle, either running sideline sprints during practice or filling in on training drills, including at quarterback.

Importantly, and regardless of the level they coach, both men also do what matters – they win.

But as for either being a sure thing?

Sorry, they don’t exist in the world of professional coaches.

A truth proved by the incredible churn Bennett has not only witnessed, but beaten.

According to Fox Sports statistician Aaron Wallace, Bennett’s NRL reign -- which started with his debuting at Canberra in 1987 -- has occurred while over 100 head coaches have been moved through what has to be one of the nation’s most unforgiving employment sectors.

Incredibly, a milestone that now sees this former Queensland copper readying to challenge NRL rookies Jason Ryles and Kristian Woolf after having also twice coached against the late, great Jack Gibson – winning both.

Elsewhere, Bennett has witnessed the coming and going of a list which includes, but is no way limited to, the likes of Johnny Lang, Alan Jones, David Waite, Brad Fittler, Chris Anderson, Wayne Pearce, Michael Hagan, Kevin Walters, Geoff Toovey, Rick Stone, Jason Taylor, Kevin Moore … and breeeeeeeath … Peter Sharp, Dean Pay, Steve Price, Graham Lowe and Johnny Morris.

Call it an experience Bennett brought to those meetings Wednesday.

“So, no, it hasn’t been the most settled morning in the club’s history,” Solly would concede later that same afternoon, his day still a long way from being done. “But Wayne’s calmness, his consistency, it helps you plot the next steps.”

Just as importantly, the CEO continued, was how both staff and players could not only hear calmness, but feel it.

“And they respond,” he said.

Which isn’t to suggest reading this now, you think Souths will be sweet over the first six weeks, or at all this year.

Nor does it matter.

Or not unless Bennett needs you carting Steedens headlong into St George Illawarra for Saturday’s Charity Shield in Mudgee.

Or within weeks, launching into a season as $34 TAB outsiders -- with South Sydney having been wound out to double the price they were Wednesday morning.

Apart from having to now deal with all those issues arising from Wednesday’s chaos, Bennett has also got to answer questions hanging over $2 million Englishman Lewis Dodd, largely untested No.9 Peter Mamouzelos, even enigmatic recruit Josh Schuster.

And all this before you get to South Sydney winning just seven games last year.

Wayne Bennett has brought success to the Bunnies before. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

But again, find us someone who brings out the best in young men better than Bennett.

Sure, the bloke started coaching up in Brisbane before his players were born.

Hell, before some of their parents were born.

But still, even in his 70s, Bennett relates.

Doesn’t matter the age.

Or era.

A truth proved by the fact that when tossing his current NRL peers into the mix, Bennett has over the course of his career squared off against a staggering 114 rivals.

Of that group, he boasts a 50% strike rate, or better, with 96 of them.

Among that number too, 36 have never beaten him.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t some wonderful anomalies, including three of his proteges -- Craig Bellamy, Steve Price and Demetriou – all having winning percentages over the master.

Apart from Demetriou winning his sole appearance against the old bloke, former St George Illawarra coach Price boasts four wins from as many games.

Know too however that of those few coaches who do boast winning records against Bennett, almost half are nearly evenly split while another five comprise less than a dozen games.

Yet as you can see from the accompanying list below, the undeniable unicorn in all this is Melbourne Storm’s Bellamy, who in an incredible feat has won all but 10 of their 42 clashes.

Who are Wayne Bennett's toughest rivals?

And what about Wayne’s winningest rivals?

Of course, you can crunch the above numbers however you like – and use them to say whatever you like -- but what matters most in this game is longevity and winning premierships, both of which Bennett has a stronghold over.

Apart from his seven NRL titles, the returning Bunnies coach is also the oldest in premiership history, with Tim Sheens, who was 73 during his most recent Wests Tigers stint, next.

Before that however, you have to go all the way back to 1946, and fellow South Sydney coach Athur Hennessy.

Although that year, it should be noted, the 70-year-old’s Bunnies did run stone motherless last – just as Wests Tigers also did during that second Sheens’ reign.

Still, if there is anyone deserving enough to rock sandals, socks and those t-shirts proclaiming ‘Old Guys Rule’, it has to be the bloke charged with bringing the Bunnies out of this latest chaos.

Already in his return from the Dolphins, Souths players will tell you how Bennett has simplified their schedule, messaging, whiteboard sessions, everything.

Which isn’t unlike a story Shane Webcke, who won four titles for Bennett’s Broncos, likes to tell about a training session he watched when the coach was heading towards another triumph with St George Illawarra.

Attending a training session in Wollongong, Webcke was intrigued to see how different his old mentor would be, in both drills and approach to players.

Yet what he saw through the first 40 minutes?

It was all the same old stuff.

“I recognised every single drill,” Webcke would later recount. “Recognised the patterns, recognised everything.”

Bennett has been around the game for a long time. (AAP Image/Samantha Manchee)

With the old prop going on to explain that, in Bennett, you have somebody who believes that what won rugby league games once, always will.

Solly concurs.

“Wayne’s values around what creates success, they haven’t changed,” he insists. “Yes, in rugby league the tactics, the preparation, they’ve evolved and Wayne has evolved with them.

“But his core values remain consistent.

“And Wayne’s incredibly consistent in applying them.”

Which is also one of three key attributes Solly names when asked why Bennett is not only such a proven commodity, but why he earns such implicit trust with his players.

“Consistency,” the chief executive says.

“Consistency with messaging to players, and consistency with his expectations of them”.

Next up, he continues, is Bennett’s curiosity.

“Wayne is really curious,” Solly says of a trait not uncommon among introverts, which those closest to the coach have long claimed him to be. “When you’re curious about what makes people tick, that’s when you really get to know them on a personal level … and people respond to that”.

And the third trait?

That would be all that comes with a man’s experience.

“And what happened this morning,” Solly says late Wednesday afternoon, “is a really good example of that”.

Originally published as Wayne Bennett’s incredible act amid Rabbitohs’ Latrell Mitchell and Cameron Murray disaster