The Wolf You Feed

by Andrew Webster

Wayne Bennett is the greatest rugby league coach Australia has ever had. He has won seven premierships and is the greatest man manager the game has known.

He is a living contradiction: a self-professed introvert who can hold an audience in the palm of his hand; an autocrat on a humanitarian mission to make good men of his young charges; a devoted husband (and father of the year) who left his wife after 42 years of marriage. Other coaches decry his tactics then attempt to imitate them. Players are desperate to work with him but are left feeling deceived when he cuts them loose. The media disparages him then lavishes him with praise.

So who is the real Wayne Bennett?

Celebrated sports journalist Andrew Webster has been on a mission to find out. For two years, he has interviewed family, close friends, sworn enemies, colleagues, coaches and players, as well as Bennett himself, and trawled through acres of print and recordings.

Webster shows us a complex, brilliant and difficult man. We come to admire the good wolf of Bennett's nature - the genius who transforms young unformed players into titans of the game. And the bad wolf - the wrangler who plays the dark arts of football politics with obsessive determination.

Expertly written and compulsively readable, Webster's account of Bennett is not unlike the man himself: controversial, combative, and impossible to ignore.