Campbell Graham tells a story about how Wayne Bennett, the South Sydney coach from an analog era, is still able to keep up with a squad of players who have been brought up in a digital age.
Graham brings up the time the Rabbitohs coach - all 76 years old of him - rolled into training one day and challenged pocket-sized halfback Ashton Ward to a bench-press competition as a way of breaking the ice.
“It was a lot closer than Wardy would have liked, I think he hit 100kg and Wayne got to 95kg,” Graham said.
“In my eyes it was a draw, Ashton Ward drew a bench-press competition with a near 80-year-old man - I want that on record.”
Tales of Bennett’s ability to put players at ease are nearly as old as the supercoach himself.
Just ask playmaker Jayden Sullivan, who was gifted a cushion by Bennett after a run of games where he was an unused substitute.
“I was sitting on the bench for a few games and he brought me a pillow to sit on and he said ‘I don’t want your backside getting sore’,” Sullivan recalled ahead of Friday’s elimination final with Newcastle.
Then there was the day midway through the pre-season that forward Adam Elliott rocked up to Souths’ Maroubra training base to sign his contract with the Bunnies, only for the supercoach to play dumb.
“I walked into his office and he said, ‘what are you here for? Who are you?’ - that was my first taste of him,” Elliott said.
“(After a pause) he looked at me and said, ‘well we best go get this done’.”
Five-eighth Cody Walker reckons Bennett’s pranks and wind-ups are about helping his players have clear heads, but also to test them and interpret how they react.
“He knows how to get every player up in his own little way that makes you want to run through brick walls,” Walker said.
And that goes the other way in Walker’s case too, which is why Bennett rarely tries to upstage his five-eighth.
“He wouldn’t dare take me in a weightlifting competition because I’d flog him,” Walker said.
“He probably leaves me alone because I’m the biggest pest at the club and he knows what’s coming back, he won’t like it. (At some point) everyone has been a victim of his dry humour.”
Walker, along with Latrell Mitchell and David Fifita, is one of Bennett’s most-gifted players in a squad dripping with talent that has every chance of making a deep run into the finals.
But Graham believes the reason Bennett has got the Bunnies back to the finals for the first time since 2023 is a knack for squeezing every drop of potential out of every member of his team, no matter their ability.
"Sometimes you just don't know what you're going to get with him,” Graham said.
"But if you’re coming off a loss or low on confidence, he’s got a good way of building that belief back up.
"Wayne’s speciality with coaching is how simple he makes your role and there’s players here who are unsung heroes in our group - Lachlan Hubner, Adam Elliott, Sullivan - they are blokes who put in maximum effort each week.
“That’s the type of player Wayne wants and that’s the type of player I want to play with who’s leading line speed. Wayne sees that and that’s probably the secret for the success in our group.”
