The Sports Factor

Brisbane Broncos coach Wayne Bennett will be moving from one of the youngest clubs in the competition, to one of the oldest. From establishing football traditions in Brisbane to rediscovering someone else's, namely St George's.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Next up, the seasonal churn in Rugby League's coaching ranks.

Peter Doust: Afternoon everybody, and thanks for coming. Today the Dragons announced the signing of Wayne Bennett as head coach for 2009, '10 and '11. And in saying that, we've sought not to reappoint Nathan Brown as head coach. The Board of Directors completed a comprehensive and deliberate process yesterday, and this morning I spent time talking to the players and the staff of the Dragons to inform them of the decision, and I think we all, 100%, say how grateful we are to Nathan Brown for his contribution to the Dragons over the last six years, but we've just chosen to move in a new direction.

Mick O'Regan: Peter Doust, Chief Executive at the St George Illawarra Dragons, with the announcement that galvanised the attention of the Rugby League community. The new direction is to be provided by an old navigator.

Wayne Bennett: I love the things that it teaches you; it teaches you to be disciplined, it teaches you not to give in; it teaches you to take a knock; it teaches you to handle disappointment.

Mick O'Regan: And handling disappointment has been high on the St George agenda for some time. Wayne Bennett will be moving from one of the youngest clubs in the competition, to one of the oldest. From establishing football traditions in Brisbane to rediscovering someone else's, namely St George's.

Bennett's departure from the Broncos marks the end of an era, like Kevin Sheedy at Essendon, or Bobby Rose at Collingwood, or Jack Gibson from almost anywhere.

Bruno Cullen is the CEO of the Brisbane Broncos, and I asked him how he sees the role of the head coach.

Bruno Cullen: Oh, look, it's vital I suppose, probably the pivotal job in the organisation. I mean I've got a role to run a commercial operation, a publicly-listed company, so all those things are quite separate from the football, but then run off the back of the football, so the Director of Coaching, the Head Coach, no matter what title you might give them, play an extremely vital role in that space of the only product you've got, the product that he's producing, and then it goes back to brand. So the commercial side of the business is all on the back of the power of the brand and the brand's on the back of the power of the footy team and we're not talking about winning premierships, we're just talking about entertainment, we're in the entertainment industry, it's a sport, but we're in the entertainment industry. If people don't enjoy going to, being at, and going from a game of footy, then your business is in trouble. So that all revolves around the head coach.

Mick O'Regan: Now tell me, in the 20 years or so that Wayne Bennett has been the head coach at the Broncos, how would you sum up his legacy?

Bruno Cullen: Well I guess along with some of the other early players, and I talk about the Barry Marantas, the Porky Morgans and the John Rebots of the world, Wayne has played again, quite a significant role and he, if you like, I won't say he is the Broncos because he's moving on, and the Broncos will stay, but he's built the Broncos, and he's almost irreplaceable in that regard. No-one's indispensable, but Wayne Bennett, that being and that 20-year coaching reign, that will never be repeated. So what Wayne's done, and the contribution he's made to the club is basically irreplaceable.

Mick O'Regan: Now I know there's nothing settled on who'll be the Director of Coaching for the Broncos in 2009, though there's much talk around Craig Bellamy, the current coach of the Melbourne Storm, in looking at a new Director of Coaching, do you think the club will be seeking to continue the traditions that have been established, or is this an opportunity to move off in a new direction, with a new coaching philosophy, and possibly a new style?

Bruno Cullen: The guy that comes in to replace Wayne, his biggest mistake would be to try and be Wayne Bennett, or be the next Wayne Bennett. As I said before, Wayne's quite unique and he's irreplaceable as the being that he was, or has been. The new guy has got to come in here with, as you say, his own philosophies, his own ideas about how teams should play, the sort of roster that he wants here. He has to maintain the culture and the discipline that Wayne's built up over those 20 years, but they're about the only two things he needs to maintain. He will fail and I've got no doubt this, he will fail if he tries to be the next Wayne Bennett, he's got to be the next whatever his name is, and stamp his own personality and philosophies on the game on this team and this club.

Mick O'Regan: Is it tricky this season when Wayne Bennett is concluding his period at the Broncos, and yet there's much speculation about what might happen next season. Does this put either the club, the coach or the team in difficult waters?

Bruno Cullen: Obviously with the results so far, it hasn't shown that, and this has been very well managed, and everyone's played their part there, but particularly Wayne. The timing of his announcement that he wanted to move on was six weeks before the kick-off. He named that time because he knew there'd be emotion around that announcement. He wanted to give the players enough time to get their emotion out of that, that probably took a week or two, so then he always knew he was going to have another month to focus on the premiership kick-off. We've done that.

It's going to have to be well-managed, but so far everybody's played their part and it's been, if you like, almost perfect, and I'm not talking now about just because we've won those first three games, I'm talking about the way the players have handled it, the way Wayne's going on about his business like absolutely nothing's happened, and who cares what's happening next year, it's this year that we're focusing on. All of the staff are the same, including the front office staff, and it's really - and people might not understand this, but it's really business as usual.

Mick O'Regan: Right. Just as far as that business as usual goes, obviously there's much talk about players leaving and players coming, and the potential of someone of Wayne Bennett's stature to lure players to St George, the opportunities that might be created with a new coach at the Broncos. In that sort of sliding diagram of opportunities opening and closing, do you think there will be major player movements?

Bruno Cullen: Look I don't expect so, but again, just to remind people, we won the premiership just one short season ago. At the end of '06 we were the premiers, and we've just started '08. The 18 players we took to the Grand Final in '06, we've lost 8 of those: Shane Webcke, Tame Tupou, Casey Maguire, Petro Civoneceva, Brad Thorn, Brent Tate.

Mick O'Regan: Pretty significant players in that list.

Bruno Cullen: So I don't expect in the next year or two that we'll have that same sort of player movement. All of those players except Casey Maguire were internationals, Tame played for New Zealand, the rest of them played for - and Casey did play for Queensland - so the rest of them were State of Origin and/or Australian players. So on the player front nothing has changed. Now obviously Wayne being a coach here was an attraction for some people to come here, but those people that have come here, under three-year deals and know that the next two years aren't going to be with Wayne, aren't all that disappointed. Of course they would have loved to have been with Wayne for three years, and all due respect to Wayne, but they've now had a taste of the Broncos culture and what it means to be around a joint like this, and the support staff and the support structure we've got.

So they love being here, whilst they might be slightly disappointed, they're not going to do that two or three years with Wayne, they're extremely happy to stay. We have got players coming off contract this year, and we'll be negotiating with them over the next little while. But again, I don't see this period being any different than any other year when if a player's attracted to another club, and there's 15 other clubs out there, then it'll be the same, it'll be game-on, can we keep them here, or are they being attracted away from the joint by another club, whether that be St George, or the other 14.

Mick O'Regan: Just finally, there's been a growing rivalry between the Brisbane Broncos and the St George Dragons or the St George Illawarra Dragons as they are now of course, there were two consecutive Grand Finals in '92 and '93, in both of which the Broncos triumphed. Do you think that Wayne Bennett running the coaching for the Dragons will add a certain spice to the rivalry between the clubs?

Bruno Cullen: Look that's probably, if you don't mind me saying, it's probably a little bit overplayed, I mean that was a long time ago, that's 15 or 16 years ago. We've actually got a very close relationship with St George, they're one of the best crowd pullers here in Brisbane, they've got a great tradition and I've got a very close relationship with their CEO, Peter Doust, and we always work together in both our games here and their games down there, where he tries his best to get as many Dragon supporters to come along to the Suncorp Stadium, they love playing up here. So look, our relationship generally is extremely good.

As I said, the premierships were a long time ago. Wayne going there will make a huge difference, he's got some inside knowledge, or a lot of inside knowledge about this club, and once he crosses the border and puts the big red V on, he'll be doing all in his power to be successful down there. Now we wouldn't expect anything less, so we look forward to the ongoing rivalry, but at the same time we expect it to be very civil and very friendly, except when they get out on the field for 80 minutes when we play.

Mick O'Regan: Brisbane Broncos Chief Executive, Bruno Cullen.

Warren Ryan has had different counters with Wayne Bennett as an opposing coach and as an analyst and commentator. So, does he think the guidance of a good coach can put the fire back into the Dragons?

Warren Ryan: No, only if it was a winning team. Just the whole question of what comes first, the chicken or the egg, well these days football is - there's a famous quote by an American player. The Manager's talking to the equivalent of a CEO in America, and the CEO's desperately trying to see if the player is interested in coming to his club, and he said, 'You know, does he lean in any particular direction?' and the Manager says, 'Yes, he leans towards the cash.'

Mick O'Regan: Show me the money. Do you think it's possible to distil specific attributes that he brings to the game as a coach that's made him so successful?

Warren Ryan: Well I was a rival of his when he first began. I was coaching Balmain, we had quite a record, over them initially.

Mick O'Regan: What was the secret of those early wins?

Warren Ryan: I had a fabulous pack of forwards.

Mick O'Regan: That helps.

Warren Ryan: As I wrote in the column. St George have been more famous in recent years for building the strength of other teams' packs rather than their own. And there's a lot of people have a feeling that the forwards they've let go are better than the ones they've kept. So Wayne hasn't got the personnel there to win a comp, I don't care how good a coach anybody is, if they get the St George of the current crop of players there, they can't win the competition. That's point 1. Now unless that changes next year, I think he'll get a lot more maturity out of them, and he won't put up with this adolescent nonsense that some of them go on with. I think he's very, very good in that area.

But Wayne to me has never been a wonderful strategic coach in terms of the technical side of the game. But he's been a wonderful achiever, and blokes want to play for him. Even Andrew Johns in assessing all the different coaches, even though he was only briefly with Wayne in the Australian side, that was the assessment that he attributed to Wayne that he was a terrific man-manager. So he'll get the best out of his troops, but it's just a matter whether the troops are good enough to give him the results that he wants or the club expects.

Mick O'Regan: Would it be the icing on the cake for his career to spend the last couple at St George and bring that great old club a premiership?

Warren Ryan: I don't think it's going to happen, but you know, stranger things have happened. But a lot'll have to change there in terms of personnel before that lot could win a comp.

Mick O'Regan: And just on the outgoing coach, Nathan Brown, will his period at St George be regarded as an out-and-out failure do you think?

Warren Ryan: Yes, I think so. I think it's already been regarded as that by everyone you talk to, just shake their head and say what talent he had and what little he did with it. The pity for Wayne is that he didn't come there when they had all the talent, and that was back when I suppose Timmins and all that gang played, Thompson in the forwards and they had such a - and Luke Bailey - they had a terrific line-up of talent.

Mick O'Regan: Warren Ryan, former Rugby League coach, now part of the Grandstand commentary team on ABC Local Radio. So no immediate miracles for the Dragons, though 2009 will be exactly 30 years since their last premiership.

Thanks to The Sports Factor team of producer, Andrew Davies, our technical producer this week, Peter McMurray, and to Sabrina Lipovic in ABC Archives.

Guests

Warren Ryan
Former rugby league coach, and ABC commentator.

Bruno Cullen
Chief Executive of the Brisbane Broncos.

Presenter

Mick O'Regan

Producer

Andrew Davies