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Wayne Bennett should roll over for Stone at the Knights

20th July, 2014
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Should Wayne Bennett step aside at the Knights? (AAP Image/Dean Lewins)
Expert
20th July, 2014
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What is the point in Wayne Bennett remaining coach of Newcastle for the rest of the season? The Knights should part company with him now and let Rick Stone take over for the last seven rounds.

It wouldn’t be a case of the club sacking Bennett or being disrespectful to him by suggesting the two parties end the association now. He’s going at the end of the season anyway, and it is being reported in today’s newspapers that his original club, Brisbane, will be his destination.

It would just be a case for the Knights of facing the facts and moving on a bit earlier than planned.
Stone coached the Knights previously and is one of Bennett’s assistants. If, as has been reported, he is a genuine contender to coach Newcastle next season, it would give the club the chance to consider him more closely by seeing what he can do at a time when the club is down.

It isn’t as if Newcastle are a chance of making the finals and they shouldn’t even think of changing anything.
They are in 14th place on 14 points, eight points outside of the top eight. If they won all of their remaining games they would finish on 28, which is seen as the minimum amount likely to get you there. But it’s not worth worrying about, because the Knights simply aren’t good enough to do that.

If they won more games than they lost over the last seven rounds it would be a great result.

Some might regard it as heresy to suggest a club should choose to part ways with a coach like Bennett ahead of time. After all, he has won seven premierships and is widely regarded as the greatest coach ever.

But one reason the Knights should neither be embarrassed nor afraid to do it is because Bennett has already chosen to do that himself with his recent announcement that he won’t be coaching Newcastle next year.

As great a coach as Bennett has proven himself over a long career, he’s effectively a lame-duck coach at Newcastle between now and the end of the season.

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If Bennett was finishing up at the club because he was retiring from coaching or he had publicly declared at the time he announced he was leaving that he wanted to go back to Brisbane to be closer to home for personal reasons, it would be different. But he said neither.

When he announced he wouldn’t be coaching Newcastle next year, Bennett said: “The NRL and those that are running the club at the moment were keen for me to stay, but I’ve been here three years and I don’t think our performances, particularly this year, have been satisfactory.

“So in view of that, I take a bit of responsibility and ownership of that – I always have.

“If I was in my first year here, it might have been different, but it’s my third year now and I’m most disappointed with what we’ve done and it gives someone else an opportunity to come and see what they can do.

“The overall performance was the catalyst for me. I’m extremely disappointed. I’m embarrassed by it and it’s time to move on.”

Yesterday, after the Knights had lost 22-8 at home on Rise for Alex day, Bennett said: “We just rained on our own parade. It has just been such a crazy season. I’ve given up as to trying to work out why [we lost]. There is no reason for that type of performance here from us. I just can’t get my head around it.”

I don’t see anything in any of those quotes from Bennett that suggests a lot is going to change under him at the Knights over the last seven weeks of the season. It may not change with someone else in charge either, but the club may as well have a look.

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