{"id":43083,"date":"2021-03-10T07:27:06","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T08:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=43083"},"modified":"2021-03-10T09:07:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T09:07:40","slug":"bennett-reveals-teenage-smith-snubbed-broncos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=43083","title":{"rendered":"Bennett reveals teenage Smith snubbed Broncos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veteran supercoach Wayne Bennett has revealed it was a young Cameron Smith who rejected the Broncos in favour of the Storm, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

Off the back of the 430-game veteran's retirement announcement on Wednesday,<\/a> Bennett revealed new insight into a fateful meeting when he first crossed paths with a teenage Smith.<\/p>\n

Bennett was coach of the Broncos at that time and had a meeting with Smith, a Logan Junior, about possibly calling Red Hill home.<\/p>\n

It didn't come to pass, with Smith eventually joining the Melbourne Storm where he would go on to play a record 19 seasons, winning three premierships, and two Dally M medals.<\/p>\n

\"Cameron<\/p>\n

But Bennett insists it wasn't the Broncos who were cold on Smith, it was the future superstar who wasn't convinced.<\/p>\n

"Cyril Connell (Queensland great and former Broncos recruitment) saw him play first, I saw him play and under 17s game and he wasn't playing hooker at the time," Bennett told reporters on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

"He came to Broncos, his father came, his manager came and it was myself and Cyril in the room.<\/p>\n

"We made him an offer but I just felt he didn't want to play at the Broncos. It was a good offer but the bottom line was he made a choice to go to Melbourne.<\/p>\n

\"Walters<\/p>\n

"It was his choice, as I said we wanted him there but he didn't think it suited him for whatever reason and that's fine."<\/p>\n

Asked whether the legendary No.9 was the one that got away, Bennett said: "No, not really because we tried to recruit him."<\/p>\n

"It wasn't a poor decision by us, he just didn't want to play there for whatever reason. That's just the way it works," he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veteran supercoach Wayne Bennett has revealed it was a young Cameron Smith who rejected the Broncos in favour of the Storm, not the other way […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43083"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43085,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43083\/revisions\/43085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}