Good News: Broncos Star Player is back on top ahead of Brisbane battle – and
ife’s easy when you’re on top of the pile. Just ask Wayne Bennett.
The great man will love that he is still wanted by one of the biggest names in the game at South Sydney, but what will give him even more pleasure is sitting on top of the NRL ladder, as his Dolphins side currently do ahead of their first meeting with the big brother Broncos this Friday night at Suncorp Stadium.
Bennett loves to confound critics, which is now well into doing for a second time in succession with the Phins, and he loves to stick it up those who have wronged him, which is an opportunity he’ll get on Friday night.
He also loves South Sydney, as evidenced by how badly he took their defeat in the 2021 Grand Final, and how he admitted how much he miss the playing group at the start of 2022, when they began life without him, and with Jason Demetriou.
The narrative of Bennett waltzing back in at Redfern – well, Maroubra, as they’ve moved in his absence – is growing louder and louder with every passing defeat for Souths and every victory for his new side.
It’s not like Bennett really needs to win anymore, for sure. His reputation was bulletproof before taking on the Redcliffe gig, and that he has achieved so much in his two years with the expansion side has only burnished it further.
The narrative of Uncle Wayne once again on top while his former protégé languishes at the bottom is one that will run and run, the intricacies of a Bennett return are a lot more complex than what they first seem.
Wind back to the start of 2022 and few thought Demetriou wasn’t a good choice, especially considering the apprenticeship he had done and the responsibility he held within the Bennett-led Souths success.
The supercoach has long since stopped taking full tactical control with JD taking that part of the job at the Bunnies and Kristian Woolf doing it at Redcliffe with the intention that he take over at the end of this year when the old bloke’s contract is up.
Bennett does all the man management, team selection and public-facing parts – and holds ultimate responsibility – but Demetriou then and Woolf now were the modern, up-to-date guys tasked with communicating strategy and insights to the playing group.
There’s nothing wrong with this and by all accounts it worked.
Bennett got to have his cake and eat it, the two assistants got the ultimate apprenticeship and the two respective clubs got great results from what was, on the face of it, a slightly unusual arrangement.
It’s hard to predict what Woolf will do when he gets control of the Dolphins next year, but we can immediately see what JD did, which, on the field at least, was change very little.
He didn’t need to because the tactics before he was head coach were his anyway.
The 2024 comparison between Bennett’s fortunes and that of his former assistants is stark – one is top, one is bottom – but there are mitigating factors everywhere.
