By STEVE MASCORD
ENGLAND winger Jermaine McGilvary has revealed how Wayne Bennett pretended to not even know his name at the Four Nations – before delivering him the greatest pep talk of his life.
It’s the best insight from a player for years into how the supercoach operates. Bennett is today painted as a little absent minded and prone to fall asleep at a moment’s notice but according to the Huddersfield flanker, it’s merely a ruse he uses to motivate people.
“He had this thing where he used to mess with me, he used to just kill me in front of the squad,” McGilvary, 28, tells RLW.
“He named the first squad, against France. He said ‘so-and-so’s playing’ and he pointed at me and said (clicks fingers) … he didn’t know my name and everyone just started laughing out loud.
“I thought ‘Oh God he doesn’t even know my name’. It got to the week after and he was picking the squad for the New Zealand game and he said ‘Lomax, you’re playing’ and he came to me and said ‘James, you’re playing’. Everyone just started hysterically laughing.”
But things changed when Bennett approached McGilvary on his own.
“We got down to the training field and and he goes ‘hiya Jermaine, how you doing?’.
“I went ‘so you know my name!’. He said ‘yeah’. I said ‘so why are you messing with me?’. He said ‘I do everything for a reason’ and he started laughing.
“He grabbed me at the end of training and he was telling me about myself, things I didn’t think he knew. He doesn’t know me personally but he was telling me what my characteristics were like, he was telling me what I was like as a player.
“This guy, he doesn’t even know me and he’s telling me.
“He said ‘I want you to play with no fear. If you make a mistake, I’ll cop it. I want you to just go out there like you’re playing in a Super League game’.
“He said ‘I haven’t picked you on last year’s form because your team was poor and you played poor in quite a few of those games but I know what you can do and I know what you’re capable of’.
“He said ‘just believe in yourself because I believe in you’. As soon as he said that, all last season went out of the window.
“I just went out there like I didn’t care. I didn’t care who I was up against or what was on the line. I just went out and played.”
From: RUGBY LEAGUE WEEK, February 8 2017
