You can run but you can't hide from your duty
By Phil Gould
December 4, 2005
Page 1 of 2
Escape artist ... Wayne Bennett had no right to dodge the press.
Australian coaches and selectors can no longer treat opposing nations with the contempt they've shown in recent decades. The Tri-Nations series has clearly shown us that.
Picking favourites, players out of form, or those to whom we think we owe something are no longer satisfactory criteria. Australia's selection process ignored much of what happened in the NRL this season.
Having said that, the players we sent to England were experienced professionals and they did have eight weeks together before losing the final.
I know Australia can't be great all the time but we've prided ourselves on being great when it counts. This time we came up horribly short.
I just expected that when the day finally came for our colours to be lowered, it would be a tooth-and-nail struggle to the bitter end against a team that played the perfect game of football to defeat us.
We lost this game for all the wrong reasons. We were humiliated 24-0 by an understrength Kiwi team coached by a novice from the Auckland junior league who had no experience in the NRL.
I don't blame coach Wayne Bennett, but he is far from blameless. I'll be honest in saying I haven't fallen under the "Wayne Bennett is a genius" spell like some people. I've always respected him as a formidable opponent but he's no god.
Australia looked old, tired and bored. They lacked structure in attack. It was the worst defence I've seen from our national team. But the ARL says Bennett is doing a great job and will be reappointed.
I have no problem with that. Perhaps, though, the ARL could explain why the national coach refuses to be interviewed by the game's broadcasting partners and certain sections of the media when every other player and coach in the game freely gives his time to make the game more personal for the fans.
Perhaps the NRL could explain why it tolerates his non-attendance at coaches' meetings to discuss rule interpretations but allows him to criticise these decisions.
The ARL should point out to Bennett that national cricket coach John Buchanan and rugby coach Eddie Jones had the courage to return home from losing tours with the players and face the media. They didn't take the express route to the car park to avoid questions.
As for the ARL explanation that the tour of England effectively ended in Manchester when the group disbanded to go their separate ways - well, this is rubbish.
I'm not sure Bennett's actions can or should be justified, but the ARL has tried to support him with this ridiculous explanation.
If this is an example of the leadership shown on tour, is it any wonder we performed so miserably? It is an example of how Bennett is a law unto himself and the ARL and NRL refuse to pull him into line.
When you tour as a group representing your country, you should leave together and come home together. The ARL has a responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of players. Sure, they are big boys, but the ARL should be responsible for their safe return.
I also think if players were planning holidays in Europe and Mexico after the last game, perhaps this explains where their heads were during the embarrassing loss in the final.
The tour should be made as enjoyable as possible while the troops are in England. But the basic premise of togetherness and unity being an integral part of team building is lost if everyone is looking forward to packing up and going their separate ways when the last game has been played.
Get them home in one piece and then if the players want an overseas holiday they can go where they like.
I am quite sure that if one of the players left behind in England were to disgrace himself by trashing a hotel or assaulting a member of the public, the ARL and NRL would be quick to fine him for breaching the code of conduct.
If the code of conduct applies to players after the camp broke up in Manchester, why don't the obligations of the Australian coach still apply to Bennett - namely meeting the media on his return to this country?
It appears Bennett chooses to ignore a fair bit that goes with being Australian coach. And if he thinks we should learn to tolerate losing, I hope he understands if we choose to ignore him.
Source: The Sun-Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/league/you-can-run-but-you-cant-hide-from-your-duty/2005/12/03/1133422151589.html
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Pedantic coach didn't plan on power of the passion
By Andrew Webster
December 4, 2005
Page 1 of 2
On the Sunday before the Tri-Nations final, as the Australian players left their hotel their itinerary for the afternoon was clearly marked on a whiteboard in the foyer.
At 12.30pm, the team bus would take them to a bar in Headingley for a barbecue lunch. At 5.30pm, the bus would return. At 7pm, they were to find their own way to dinner before returning to their rooms.
Spare time has never been so organised.
That night, coach Wayne Bennett waited in the foyer and performed a mental rollcall until all were tucked away in their rooms.
Such behaviour does not surprise from the stone-faced Broncos coach, who has come under unprecedented pressure - for him - since his Kangaroos lost the Tri-Nations final against New Zealand a week ago; the first time an Australian rugby league side has lost a series or tournament in 27 years.
But it's such behaviour that is being floated as one of the reasons for Bennett's alleged fall from grace, first with the Broncos and now the oft-unconquerable Australian team. And it's such behaviour that has critics questioning if the 55-year-old has lost his coaching mojo.
On his return to Australia on Thursday, he comically gave the assembled media at Brisbane airport the slip.
Very un-Bennett.
In October he had sacked Kevin Walters, Glenn Lazarus and Gary Belcher from his Broncos coaching staff following another season in which they faded with the big dance looming. He won't say it but Bennett knew it was either him or them.
The ARL and the Broncos management, and Bennett's players for club and country, say he remains the right man for his respective jobs. Apart from a select few, no one will bag him publicly. But behind the scenes, those close to the situation can give some insight into how the mastercoach's aura is starting to dim.
They tell you that Bennett has too much power, as Maroons great Arthur Beetson said in July.
They tell you he is doing too much. At the Broncos, there's a thought that Bennett is labouring with his workload. He is juggling club commitments as Kangaroos coach, Queensland coaching director and a diary full of speaking engagements and charity work.
They tell you he is obsessive. He was hell-bent on filling his players' idle time on tour with golf days and rides in RAF planes and imposed 4am curfews after he had turned in at 10pm.
It's understood that you could count on one hand the number of times the squad tied one on. It may have grated on the Kangaroos, especially the elite players who don't need to be treated like 18-year-olds during schoolies week.
At the end of a long NRL season, they may have felt jaded. One player was heard, just hours before the final, saying: "Just get this game out of the way and then I'm on holidays."
They tell you that Bennett made two key mistakes before the final.
First, he told his players they could go to the London backpackers bar the Church after the final. The excited - and for much of the tour curfew-bound - players had shirts made with the slogan "Champagne Campaign".
Members of the squad's management strongly disagreed with this deal, believing it shifted the side's focus.
Second, many privately believe that Bennett underestimated the Kiwis. He suggested on several occasions that the Kiwis were passion players - and the passion could take them only so far. He believed it would expire in the final. It didn't.
Bennett has an open contract at the Broncos and will have the job as long as he wants. ARL boss Geoff Carr hinted he could be reappointed for next year, perhaps as early as this week.
Maybe they have been following the lead of Yogi Berra, the former US baseball legend and coach of the New York Yankees whose one-liners are among the few things that bring a broad smile to Bennett's face. "Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hitting."
Source: The Sun-Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/league/pedantic-coach-didnt-plan-on-power-of-the-passion/2005/12/03/1133422151592.html
