While the role was subsequently handed to former Cowboys coach Paul Green, Slater confirmed he too was heavily recruited for the role.<\/p>\n
"I'm a Queenslander, I've always been willing to help Queensland out," Slater told 2GB's Wide World of Sports' Radio.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
"I was in discussions with people from the QRL over the Summer when Wayne Bennett said he wasn't going to coach<\/a> the team after last year.<\/p>\n "They did put it to me. There were people who asked me if I would be interested in coaching and to be honest, I was taken aback.<\/p>\n "I never really sat down and considered it. My advice to QRL was they needed to go away and work out who exactly they thought was best for the job.<\/p>\n "All us Queenslanders want is the best person to lead Queenslanders going forward. I didn't want to be a part of the circus.<\/p>\n "When it started to become that, I called Bruce Hatcher and told him that I didn't want to be a part of that."<\/p>\n Slater said he hopes the Maroons stick with Green despite the coach's two losses this series, while confirming the rumours of a rift was "disappointing" to hear.<\/p>\n "I think Paul Green is a great candidate. He's had some tough things to deal with over the first two games," he said.<\/p>\n "He's our coach. We don't want to be throwing him out after two games.<\/p>\n "We need to stick by him. The most disappointing thing for me about all of this was how it was interpreted that were was a fraction between myself and QRL."<\/p>\n For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em> clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Queensland legend Billy Slater has confirmed he was offered the Maroons' head coaching role, but claims his decision to turn down the opportunity had nothing […]<\/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\/98926"}],"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=98926"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98928,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98926\/revisions\/98928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Why](\"https:\/\/vms-network-images-prod.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com\/2021\/07\/369070\/pickerImage.jpg\")
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