By PETER JESSUP
New Kangaroos coach Wayne Bennett belies all stereotypes of the job.
While sporting theory has it that players stop listening to a coach after four or five years, Bennett has maintained top-level performance at the Broncos since their inception in 1988, only missing finals three times in 15 years
and that in their formative years.
Coaches are supposed to be outwardly passionate and emotional with plenty to say to motivate their sides. Bennett says little.
And coaches are driven to win, aren't they? Yet Bennett says he hates the emphasis put on winning and losing more than anything else about the game.
A winning record that hovers around 68 per cent certainly had a lot to do with his appointment over Chris Anderson as Kangaroo coach. Bennett said he doesn't see the two as contradictory.
"I've done some wonderful things in life that got no recognition. And sometimes you'll get people patting you on the back when you won but you know you didn't play well.
"Or you get told the team was rubbish when you know they played well. So I just think we put too much emphasis on win-lose sometimes.
"There can only be one winner in the NRL but that doesn't mean the other 14 sides are hopeless."
With five premierships, State of Origin series wins and a series win over New Zealand in his one year as Kangaroos coach in 1998, Bennett still takes losing hard.
The Broncos were knocked out of last year's playoffs in round one against the Panthers at Penrith. That made eight losses in a row. He flew home disconsolate.
"As I came walking up the driveway the boy [son Justin] came running out of the house with a Penrith jersey on saying, 'My team won and your team lost'. It just put everything in perspective for me."
You'd wonder about that if you didn't know teenager Justin is intellectually handicapped, suffering bad epileptic fits.
Bennett and wife Trish have three children. Eldest daughter Katherine is also disabled, suffering a spinal problem that has her confined to a wheelchair.
Their middle child Elizabeth is married to former Broncos five-eighth Ben Ikin. They have two children, Will and Joseph.
When he gets uptight about team performance, losing two points in the competition or other work-related incidents, the children's achievements put everything in perspective, Bennett said.
Like former Kiwis coach Frank Endacott, whose disabled son Gary completed the New York marathon, Bennett takes inspiration and pride from what they do.
He responded quickly to interest from the Australian Rugby League board when the coaching job came up. Last time he had it he was a compromise appointment after the Super League-ARL war when Bob Fulton had taken them for the first game but then pulled out because his wife was ill.
"I was a caretaker, I didn't feel like I was given the position in my own right."
Now he does, he feels he's earned it and he's keen.
If he ever had trouble motivating himself or players he'd resign, Bennett said. That suspicion about players not listening after a while nags a bit.
"It's the biggest fear factor. That's why I have a reputation for not talking.
"I want them to listen. I don't say much so that when I do talk they listen."
He learned that from his mum, he said.
"She'd be rattling on and I'd have switched off long ago."
In his book Don't Die With The Music In You, Bennett claimed to have only two motivational team speeches - the one for when they were winning in the right pocket, the one for when they were losing in the left pocket.
But seriously, he said, there was no script for the team talk. "I don't have any trouble finding words at halftime."
Bennett grew up in Toowoomba and graduated through the police academy and stayed in the force for 20 years, first on general duties at Petrie and other country areas and later as physical education instructor at the state police college, where he met one Mal Meninga.
He played as a winger and in 1971 earned a Kangaroo jersey for the tour of New Zealand, not making the test team but playing against New Zealand 'A' and Auckland.
After a bad start as a coach in Queensland Cup with Brisbane Brothers, an era that appears to have set his legendary hardened attitude to the media because he was roundly bagged, he went on to title success with Brisbane Souths, the Maroons job and a 3-0 Origin series win and via Meninga, who recommended him into the co-coaching job, with Don Furner at Canberra in 1987. They lost the grand final.
Broncos founder Paul 'Porky' Morgan drove Bennett back to Brisbane for the start-up of the Broncos, refusing to take his no for an answer. And Bennett has loved pretty well every minute since.
He's run a disciplined operation, re-inventing the Broncos several times with star players brought from "the bush" by talent scout Cyril Connell, a legend himself. Connell identified players including the Walters brothers, Alf Langer, Darren Lockyer and many others among the club's 30 internationals and many more on the roster over the years.
Bennett pays Connell due credit. He's 74 now, the coach said, but when his eye-sight gets bad "he'll still be able to hear a good footballer I reckon".
Bennett denies there's any of the ex-cop about him. He agrees it's fair comment that the young players like discipline, to know where they stand, rather than resent it.
"I hope I've always had balance, I hope I'm always fair. We have problems, of course, but I hope that even if they don't see my side immediately, one day they look back and say, 'At least he was fair'."
Those issues include dropping Queensland icon Wally Lewis when the team was in a hole in 1991, and leaving centre Justin Hodges out of the selection every weekend for the second half of 2002 after he'd signed with the Roosters.
Coaches, to be successful, have to recognise winners. A good captain is more important than a good coach, Bennett believes. He believes himself lucky with Gorden Tallis. But an insider at the club said Bennett's great strength was teaching everyone - including Tallis - life lessons as well as footballing ones.
"He's been mentor to some people around here for most of their adult life. He gives them advice on all sorts of problems, personal and financial. He's got their respect and they trust him.
"The senior players will take the piss out of him, if there's a discussion they won't back down to him but at the end of the day they all know who's boss."
The coach has little time for anything other than family and football, his only relaxation a good long run, where he clears his mind and ideas fall into place. He doesn't drink, smoke or gamble.
In his book Bennett said he treats the media with trepidation. He perceives a bias against the Broncos from Sydney journalists and dismisses what he regards a generally negative attitude.
But the question about how he fills in his time outside football brings a typically short Bennett answer: "Talking to journos."
Given it was late at night after his Broncos work was finally done and just out from a test he can't be that bad a bloke.
The Wayne Bennett file
Name: Wayne Bennett.
Born: Jan 1, 1950.
Playing career:
Warwick, Toowoomba, Brisbane Brothers and Brisbane Souths in Queensland Cup. Seven games for Queensland 1971-73. 1971 Kangaroo tour to New Zealand.
Coaching career:
Ipswich in Queensland Cup 1976, Brisbane Souths 1977-79 and 1984/85, Brothers 1980/82.
Canberra joint coach with Don Furner 1987.
Broncos coach 1988-2004, 400 games.
Queensland State of Origin coach 1986-88, 1998, 2001-03.
Kangaroos coach 1998, three tests v New Zealand.
NRL record: 428 games, won 281, lost 137, drawn 10. 67 per cent winning percentage.
Finals record: The Broncos have featured in 12 finals series in Bennett's 15 years, missing only 1988, 89 and 91.
Won the premiership 1992, 93, 97, 98, 2000
By PETER JESSUP
New Kangaroos coach Wayne Bennett belies all stereotypes of the job.
While sporting theory has it that players stop listening to a coach after four or five years, Bennett has maintained top-level performance at the Broncos since their inception in 1988, only missing finals three times in 15 years
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