{"id":726917,"date":"2026-06-10T07:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T07:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/726917\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T07:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T07:38:09","slug":"master-nrl-coach-wayne-bennett-launches-another-bunker-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/726917\/","title":{"rendered":"Master NRL coach Wayne Bennett launches another Bunker attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Super-coach Wayne Bennett has doubled down on his attack on the NRL<\/a> Bunker, claiming no major sport in the world over-uses such a flawed system.<\/p>\n

Bennett was seething after believing an incorrect play-the-ball from Manly preceded a key try against South Sydney<\/a> in their last-up loss to the Sea Eagles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a Bunker – it\u2019s supposed to be perfect because they expect us to be perfect. They have all the opportunity to make a decision and to see it and they still get it wrong,\u201d Bennett said at the time.<\/p>\n

Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today Arrow<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t get it right all the time, and they should, because they\u2019ve got the benefit of hindsight, and there\u2019s no time limit on their decision making.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a fan of no Bunker, I can tell you. I\u2019d rather just the game played on with life and accept it like we always accepted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rugby league\u2019s longest-serving mentor, who has coached 972 games in an uninterrupted 40-year career, on Wednesday revealed the NRL had been in touch since his Thursday night spray.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, they apologised to us because they got a couple of things wrong,\u201d Bennett said, before continuing his criticism of the video replay system.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it hasn\u2019t changed my opinion and I won\u2019t change it. They know how I feel about it, but mine\u2019s only one opinion. Other people have obviously got opinions on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I look at the world\u2019s games, whether it\u2019s soccer, gridiron, basketball, whatever, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any other code in the world uses the bunker as much as we do.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I asked myself the question, \u2018Why if it was such a great innovation, why aren\u2019t the other codes buying into it?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other codes aren\u2019t buying into it because they realise it\u2019s not going to help their game.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u2019ve got to assume that we think we\u2019ve got it right, but I think we haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cricket has the DRS, the AFL uses the ARC, soccer fans rue the use of the VAR, while rugby union\u2019s frustrating TMO is also often a talking point with the painstaking amount of time it can take for officials to make a ruling.<\/p>\n

Bennett is adamant rugby league fans would also be happier without the Bunker.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other codes have remained pretty strong about what they don\u2019t use in it, and I think it\u2019s a better thing because the game continues to move on very quickly and you forget about that moment pretty quickly,\u201d said the seven-time premiership-winning coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we put ours up on a board, on a replay board, it could be two or three minutes. You\u2019re just sitting there watching, making your own opinion about it all – and then we still get it wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Super-coach Wayne Bennett has doubled down on his attack on the NRL Bunker, claiming no major sport in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,1625,16660,761,762,158,3863,588,85],"class_list":["post-726917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-lifestyle","tag-manly-warringah-sea-eagles","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sponsored-content","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}