South Sydney coach Wayne Bennett has suggested his team haven’t gotten the respect they deserve over his tenure, which will end either tomorrow night or at next week’s grand final.
The mastercoach said that over the past few seasons, his team had won roughly as many games as the Penrith Panthers and Sydney Roosters, and only a few less than the Melbourne Storm. But rarely have they been talked about as being on the same tier as those sides.
“We’re not the ones giving the credit out,” he said.
Since 2018, Souths have reached the preliminary final every year. First under Anthony Seibold, and now for a third straight time under Bennett.
In that period, the Storm have won 81 games, the Roosters 70, and both Souths and Penrith 69.
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“We just play it, and we do it – we don’t write the stories or get out there and pump ourselves up … but I just know what they’ve acheived, and I said, it suits us to be undersold.”
The biggest difference, of course, is success at this time of the year. Penrith made last year’s grand final, while the Roosters and Storm have split the past three premierships. Souths fans don’t need to be reminded that 2018, 2019, and 2020 all ended one match short of the grand final.
For the first time across those four years, though, the Rabbitohs go into the grand final qualifier as favourites rather than outsiders – and aren’t thinking about their previous failures to get over this hurdle.
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“There’s no certainties in what we do, but it’s not something we’ve been dwelling on or talking about,” Bennett said.
What is certain is that the grand final won’t be some combination of Roosters/Storm/Panthers, as it has been for the past three years – but the new face may not be Souths, who first have to get past a resurgent Manly Sea Eagles.
“We’ve been there for three years, we’ve just got to get past this point, that’s the challenge tomorrow, to go one step further,” Bennett said – while adding that he didn’t want the narrative to be about his last ride with the Bunnies.
“It’s the player’s time, it’s not mine,” he said.
“They’ve been a wonderful team to work with, and to their credit they’ve got themselves back there again this year, which makes it four years in a row, actually. It’s quite an acheivement.”
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Souths were fantastic defensively against the Panthers a fortnight ago, but Bennett lamented a couple of missed opportunities in attack, particularly in the back end of the game.
“We felt we could have executed a bit better, I thought we let a couple of opportunities go, so hopefully tomorrow night we execute a bit better if we can, and maintain our defensive stability that we had in that game,” he said.
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Manly will offer a different type of test to Penrith, but Bennett wasn’t interested in putting the focus on one opposition player. When asked how to stop Tom Trbojevic, he was typically blunt.
“We’ve just got to make sure we don’t spend too much time worrying about him – and if he gets the ball, tackle him. It’s a pretty simple process.”
Both Bennett and opposition coach Des Hasler have been written off time and time again over the past few seasons, but now one of them will be returning to a grand final. Between them, they featured in eight of the ten deciders between 2006 and 2015, but none since.
“We’ve been good friends for a long time, Des and myself. I’ve always admired what he’s done,” Bennett said.
“When he come into coaching he used to come in and visit me every so often, just to get a few ideas and so forth. We’ve had a wonderful relationship.”
Hasler left the Sea Eagles after their 2011 title, and made two grand finals with Canterbury before returning to the northern beaches in 2019. Bennett said it was a perfect match.
“Certain coaches are made for certain clubs. Clubs get it wrong a lot of the time, they get the wrong guy there. Des is made for Manly, he played there, he understands it better than anybody else.
“Going back there for him was easy.”
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