Meninga and Bennett deliver moment of the night
IT WAS the sight that made the night, but only a few years ago it was one that rugby league feared could be lost from its landscape.
Mal Meninga and Wayne Bennett stood away from the maelstrom in the shadows at Wednesday night’s Hall of Fame function in Sydney, smiling as they swapped 40-year-old stories about their long gone but cherished days at the Queensland Police Academy.
Back then, Bennett was a young instructor who had more confidence in Meninga than Meninga had in himself.
Bennett and Meninga have had their differences in recent years, including a famous stoush two years ago when Meninga penned a column for The Courier-Mail claiming Bennett had been undermining him after missing out on the Kangaroos coach job Meninga landed.
Meninga wrote that he and Bennett were “not enemies, but we’re not friends either”.
That column was not a oneoff spray. Meninga had been mulling it over for months. Later they settled their differences – sort of – but there was always a feeling they would never be as close as they were.
Over the past few years there’s been times when there’s been too much tense recent history for them to be close, but on Wednesday there was too much pleasant ancient history for them to be anything but.
The joy of the Hall of Fame function was the way Meninga gave Bennett sincere thanks for inspiring him when it mattered.
In his acceptance speech as the game’s latest Immortal, Meninga told the crowd how taken aback and inspired he was as a teenage cadet when Bennett told him in front of a group that “he could be anything he wanted to be’’.
He went back to his room and wrote down a goal to play for Queensland, and so started one of the most distinguished rugby league careers of all time.
Bennett smiled warmly and soon after the formalities ended, he approached Meninga and the years fell away.
“We talked about his parents, his brothers and the relationship he has always had with them, and we talked about the police cadets he played football with and how he is still best mates with those guys,’’ Bennett said. “It was a great night for him.’’ Bennett said he appreciated Meninga’s kind words.
“When you coach you don’t know what influence you have on people. Sometimes you are long gone or in another place in the world before you realise what you have done,” Bennett said.