NRL grand final 2015: Wayne Bennett's golden point gripe is disrespectful to the Cowboys
Date: October 5, 2015 - 2:19PM
by
Andrew Webster
Chief Sports Writer, The Sydney Morning Herald
The supercoach plonked down at the table full of microphones and tape recorders for his final media conference of the year and scanned the room of reporters with usual contempt.
His top lip curled. Reverend Bennett was ready. Let the sermon begin …
"Yeah, well, I'm pleased you want to talk about the game a bit, guys, because the bottom line is this was an absolutely outstanding game of football," Bennett said when asked about his Broncos' heroic defence. "To have that you need to have two teams. The game's designed for someone to lose. Someone's gotta lose. 16-all … I would've been happy to come back next week. At the end of the day we got beaten on a field goal. Do we feel beaten? No, we don't. Do we feel disappointed? Yes, we do. Now, you need to recognise that guys. It's not about winning or losing all the time."
Thanks for pointing that out because it wasn't altogether clear from that Cowboys' try on full-time to level the scores, or the sideline conversion from Johnathan Thurston that pinged off the upright, or his successful field goal in golden point, or even the bravery of the Broncos defence, that this was an "outstanding game".
But since you've dangled the line in the water about the issue of golden point, coach, let's ask what you think about that.
"I've never been a fan of golden point," Bennett said. "It was introduced because we had a draw in a game of State of Origin. It's a lottery. It's unfair on everybody and it was most unfair here tonight. I would've been happy to come back here next week. I still don't see what's wrong with the draw. You're talking about a grand final here. It's personally not the way I want it decided … I'm not bitter. Do I sound bitter and twisted?"
Well, to be honest, you do. Just a little bit.
Bennett wasn't ungracious in defeat but he wasn't as gracious as he could have been.
We're not referring to his condescension of the press here. Who cares about the press? That curled lip has been part of the Bennett shtick for decades. Personally, I find it more interesting when Bennett says nothing at all.
His complaints, though, about golden point were disrespectful to the Cowboys. He raised it before any reporter put it to him.
And at the end of the media conference, Bennett knew it, too, because as captain Justin Hodges slowly got up to leave the coach interjected with this: "I just want to make one point. I'm not dirty on the Cowboys. I'm pleased for the Cowboys."
When it comes to media conferences, Bennett has the restraint of the Dalai Lama. He's the master of the two-word answer. Sometimes just the one. On this topic, he could've said nothing. He could've dismissed the questions about golden point like he dismisses almost everything else.
But Bennett couldn't help himself.
Was the result "unfair"? I'll climb out on a very shaky limb and say the Cowboys deserved to win because they showed more initiative with the match on the line. They used the football in the last 20 minutes – not all of it pretty – while the Broncos tried to tackle their way to the finish line, kicking for touch over and over again.
Ultimately, what counts is how you get there. In grand finals, it
is about winning and losing. Brian Smith often said to me in interviews that "there's more to footy than winning and losing".
As more than one rival coach would say privately: "I'd believe that, too, if I'd never won a premiership."
Bennett has been a consistent opponent of golden point since its introduction to the NRL in 2003.
The rules were not changed because of a draw in Origin. They were changed after former NRL bosses David Gallop and Graham Annesley attended an NFL match between the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders the previous off-season and witnessed first-hand the excitement around a match decided by golden point.
After much consultation with clubs, players and other leading figures, golden point was introduced. Bennett was almost the lone dissenter. He was easily its loudest critic.
In July that year, his Broncos side beat the Storm in a golden-point epic at Olympic Park in Melbourne and the coach exploded with joy from behind the glass of the coach's box. In other words, he cracked a smile.
"I love the golden point," he joked afterwards, before reminding everyone that he actually didn't.
In 2011, while coaching the Dragons against the Broncos in a semi-final at Suncorp Stadium, he watched Darren Lockyer shank a field goal that just cleared the cross-bar in golden point. It was Bennett's last match in charge of the Dragons.
At the end of that season, the NRL again surveyed all coaches about whether golden point should be modified for the finals. With the exception of Bennett, they wanted it retained.
Let's be fair: it's a horrible way to lose a football match. Would "golden try" be any better? Marginally. Maybe.
You might see less of what happens in golden point at the moment, with defenders jumping the gun off the line, and markers failing to line up squarely, all of them trying to extinguish a field goal and doing so with apparent impunity because they know it would take a brave referee to award a penalty in front of the uprights.
In the aftermath of Sunday night's exhausting climax, there's certainly a belief among wiser heads than this one that 20 minutes of extra-time – just as it was when Canberra beat Balmain in 1989 – would be preferable.
If the scores are still level, golden point could decide the result.
Bennett would've preferred the two sides pack up the circus after full-time before we all came back again in a few days.
Many players tell you they would prefer the matter settled. So would travel-weary fans who have just taken out a second mortgage to attend the match.
Perhaps it's a sermon for another day.
"It's not worth talking about," Cowboys coach Paul Green said when told of Bennett's remarks . "We won the comp, so … "
