"We probably can't compete": Inside Wayne Bennett's mind games

In a bid to clear the manufactured smoke hanging over tonight’s World Cup final, I have conducted a deep dive inside Wayne Bennett’s mind.

Following England’s semi-final triumph over Tonga, Bennett was quizzed on whether his side could compete with Australia, to which he confidently replied “probably not.”

The coach’s seemingly normal declaration of speech was dismissed as more mind games, chiefly because nobody in footy trusts him. This is for two reasons: because he has repeatedly fleeced us, and because he is a non-drinker.

Ever since, my team of psychologists and I have worked around the clock on the England coach to determine what he really means when he claims to have stuff-all chance in the decider.

But let me begin with this warning; delving inside the mind of a sexagenarian football coach is not a task for the faint-hearted. There’s all sorts of weird shit in there, with entire lobes dedicated to Darius Boyd and burning images of Gorden Tallis. Frankly, now it’s over, I feel like a highly-strung returned serviceman.

So what does Bennett mean when he says ‘Probably not’? Is it mental gymnastics? Is it even English?

Is his glib concession a ploy to influence the officials? Is he attempting to position his team as the underdog, thus coaxing the Australian players in to complacency to leave them exposed to an unlikely ambush from a team enraged on the words of their own coach? Is he just needling the crap out of Mal Meninga again?

After weighing up his vital behavioural traits – a love of subterfuge, tap water and naming TBA for Origin – we came up to this concerning psychoanalytical outcome: Wayne Bennett is being honest.

(AAP Image/Action Photographics, Renee McKay)

Here is the complicated rationale why.

Our extensive mining of Bennett’s head revealed he still gets footy, despite being a manipulative madman who’s reasoning is clouded by uncontrollable cravings for psychological warfare. The provisional diagnosis was a weak bout of Brian Smith syndrome.

Nevertheless, when his side is set to push shit uphill without key personnel against a stingy opponent they haven’t defeated in decades, he knows he’s probably screwed.

Further investigation also uncovered Bennett to bear chronically shallow levels of confidence in his own team, as evidenced by his continual public savagings of Sam Burgess and ceaseless selections of Australians.

Combine these factors with Aussie conditions and a hometown referee, and Bennett’s “probably not” is simply an earnest hypothesis, not some cerebral alt-tactic that will somehow inspire his side to stick it up the haters, like himself.

So cast off these words as mind games. While Bennett may have sabotaged Meninga, reneged on the Roosters, blindsided Wally Lewis, betrayed Kevin Walters and once served as a Queensland cop, we can trust him on this one.