Veteran NRL coach Wayne Bennett has squashed rumours that he will leave South Sydney at the end of the year.
It comes as rumours have been circulating that Bennett may leave his current club to join the embattled New Zealand Warriors, Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs or a shock return to his former club St George Illawarra.
“How many times do I have to put it to bed? I don’t start it and then I’ve got to put it to bed. It does my head in, mate,” Bennett told reporters on Wednesday.
“If I’m going to change clubs, I’ll let you all know about it. That’s not happening.
“I’m here til 2021 and I want to be here til 2021. I enjoy this club, I work with a great group of people - the staff and the players - and I’m happy here so why am I going to want to go somewhere else right now?
“I don’t have a manager. I don’t have management. I’m a grown man, I don’t need someone to hold my hand for me,” he said.
“Are you hard of hearing? I said the same things last week. I don’t want to keep repeating myself. You guys make up the stories, you make the headlines but I don’t have to play your game.
“I’m not going to continually go out to defend myself. I went through this rubbish at Brisbane for 12 months there and they kept telling me I had a job there and they sacked me.
“It’s terribly destabilising,” he said of the rumours.
“It does nothing for anybody and it’s not generated by me because I’m not going anywhere - I’m staying here.
“I never intimated to anybody that I’m going anywhere.”
“I never intimated to anybody that I’m going anywhere.” Ahahahahahaha Wayne will do whatever Wayne wants to do. He knows that other clubs are keen on him, so if he does get punted by Soufths he won’t have any problem getting a coaching gig at another NRL club.
He is the supreme tactician. He waits for others to come to him.