The enduring rugby league ballad of Wayne Bennett continues on Friday night when he coaches South Sydney against the Dolphins at CommBank Stadium.
In other words, the team he’s coaching for a second time meets the team he coached in their first two seasons in the NRL.
Nobody has done it better for longer at so many different clubs than the 74-year-old coach.
He was a dominant part of my life for three years as I worked on a book about him called The Wolf You Feed, and it gave me a deeper understanding of what makes him tick as a coach and man.
It certainly gave me a greater appreciation of why he’s endured for as long as he had.
The method of his madness isn’t so mad at all: he simplifies his message to his players like nobody else can.
“Why would I overload them with information?” he once told me. “They are young men who need to be given deliberate, simple instructions about what they need to do in a game of football.”
Indeed, the rugby league scrap heap is strewn with intelligent coaches who overloaded their players with information.
What’s the point of being the smartest person in the room if it doesn’t translate to on-field success?
Off the field, he has a special, understated way of making the player understand that he cares about them and wants them to succeed.
His return to the Rabbitohs has been disrupted with serious injuries to captain Cameron Murray (Achilles) and fullback Latrell Mitchell (hamstring).
Unbelievably, they occurred within 10 minutes in the same training session; we’re unlikely to see Murray again this year and Mitchell has been slated for a comeback in about two months.
Rugby league really can be cruel sometimes.
The upside of the NRL season is that it’s long enough to overcome the problems of February by September. Murray is a significant loss, but I expect to see Souths flying home late in the season after Mitchell returns.
Until then, it will take all the genius, nous, and experience of Bennett to notch enough wins to keep Souths in touch of the top-eight.
Bennett’s last match in charge of the Rabbitohs was the 2021 grand final, which was lost in dramatic circumstances against Penrith.
If I know the man at all, he returns to Souths with finishing some unfinished business firmly in his mind. He would love to become the first coach to win premierships at three different clubs.
Premierships weren’t on the agenda when he became the inaugural NRL coach for the Dolphins in 2022. They didn’t reach the finals but took us on one helluva ride trying to do so.
Highly regarded assistant coach Kristian Woolf steps up to replace Bennett — never an easy task.
People have all sorts of theories about why Bennett’s replacements struggle, but I’d suggest it’s nothing sinister. It’s because you are stepping into the breach left by the most successful coach in history.
It is rugby league’s equivalent of following Bradman into bat.
