{"id":35296,"date":"2023-05-05T05:08:25","date_gmt":"2023-05-05T05:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/rugby-league-marvel-coach-bennett\/"},"modified":"2023-05-05T05:10:02","modified_gmt":"2023-05-05T05:10:02","slug":"rugby-league-marvel-coach-bennett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/rugby-league-marvel-coach-bennett\/","title":{"rendered":"Rugby league-‘Marvel’ coach Bennett hailed ahead of 900th match"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ian Ransom<\/p>\n

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Wayne Bennett was a lanky former policeman in his mid-thirties when he took the reins of the Canberra Raiders with co-coach Don Furner and steered them to victory over the Cronulla Sharks in 1987.<\/p>\n

Some 36 years on and seven National Rugby League (NRL) titles later, the 73-year-old supercoach will plot the Sharks’ downfall again on Saturday when he coaches the Dolphins in his 900th championship match.<\/p>\n

A big crowd can be expected at Lang Park to pay tribute to the man who delivered six of his seven titles to the local Brisbane Broncos from 1988-2008 and has now lent his nous to the NRL debutants.<\/p>\n

Emotions may run high during the game, but the famously taciturn Bennett will likely have his usual poker-face on while looking to engineer victory.<\/p>\n

Tributes from players, fellow coaches and NRL head office have rained down on the luminary this week.<\/p>\n

“I can only marvel at the career of Wayne Bennett – what he has done for the game and what he has been able to achieve out of the game is phenomenal,” NRL boss Peter V’landys said.<\/p>\n

“Records may be meant to be broken, but it\u2019s almost certain this one will not be.”<\/p>\n

Bennett, in his inimitable style, was having none of the hoopla on Friday and even threatened to walk out on a press conference when asked about the milestone.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m not talking about my achievements, what I\u2019ve done and haven\u2019t done,” he said.<\/p>\n

“You\u2019ve written about them, had an opinion on them. We\u2019ve all had enough of it.”<\/p>\n

No NRL coach has come close to Bennett’s tally of games, with second-placed Tim Sheens, the 72-year-old Wests Tigers manager, yet to crack 700.<\/p>\n

With another three seasons in his contract after the current one, Bennett could yet threaten the 1,000-game milestone.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, he had never considered coaching as a career option despite success as a player who represented Queensland in the 1970s and toured New Zealand as an Australian international.<\/p>\n

He wandered into it when asked to mentor a junior side at Queensland’s police academy after the team’s coach fell ill.<\/p>\n

The coaching bug stuck and he has now been at the helm of six NRL teams along with international roles with Australia, England and Britain.<\/p>\n

His wisdom has touched generations of players and nurtured coaches who have themselves become successful rivals.<\/p>\n

“Wayne had a little bit of a different way of going about (coaching) and managing people,” said Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy, a former player under Bennett at Canberra.<\/p>\n

“It wasn\u2019t just about footy … I learned a bit off him about how he managed people, how he got on with people and how he encouraged people.”<\/p>\n

Though a disciplinarian with a capacity to be ruthless in pursuit of success, players credit Bennett for getting the best out of them and in some cases, turning their whole lives around.<\/p>\n

Winger Jamayne Isaako, who played under Bennett at the Broncos, said the chance to work with the master coach again convinced him to sign up for the new team.<\/p>\n

“Coming to Wayne and the Dolphins has taken my game to the next level,” the 26-year-old told Australian media.<\/p>\n

“You don\u2019t want to let Wayne down.” <\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Stephen Coates)<\/p>\n

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By Ian Ransom MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Wayne Bennett was a lanky former policeman in his mid-thirties when he took the reins of the Canberra Raiders with co-coach Don Furner and steered them to victory over the Cronulla Sharks in 1987. Some 36 years on and seven National Rugby League (NRL) titles later, the 73-year-old supercoach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":35297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ4403E-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35298,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296\/revisions\/35298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}