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Message: [QUOTE="GCBRONCO, post: 2781722, member: 1808"] Yeah it's true. [URL="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/nrl/wayne-bennett-opts-for-trevor-gillmeister-over-kevin-walters/news-story/2c33397c495f3bc20dfb67e08d733d09"]Nocookies | The Australian[/URL] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]The already strained relationship between Broncos coach Wayne Bennett and his former assistant Kevin Walters may well have suffered irreparable damage following revelations Bennett has reneged on another promise to bring Walters back to Red Hill, instead opting for defensive guru Trevor Gillmeister. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]One of three assistants Bennett infamously axed at the end of the 2005 season, Walters had studiously worked his way back up the NRL coaching ranks over the following 10 years through stints as a head coach in the QRL and English Super League before returning to Australia to take up an assistant role with Melbourne.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]After leaving the Storm in 2013, he returned to Bennett’s side at Newcastle before following him to the Broncos in 2015, where he shared the assistant coaching duties with Stephen Kearney.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]After Walters was chosen to replace Mal Meninga as Queensland State of Origin coach this year, he was advised to stand down from his position with Brisbane.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]Bennett decided Walters could not juggle two roles in 2017.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]“I’d had the conversation with him that if he’d got the job that he wasn’t going to be the assistant coach for next year. I didn’t want him to jeopardise any part of that preparation but I would re-employ him the following year,” Bennett said last December.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]“I didn’t want him to get that job and have it mean so much to him and then he’s club coaching with us; he’d be distracted, there’s no doubt about that. It just goes with the job unfortunately and I didn't want him to be distracted at all.”[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]But that clearly won’t be an issue, with Broncos officials confirming that Bennett was looking at “a number of candidates” to replace the Warriors-bound Kearney, with Walters’s name not on the list. The latest blow comes just eight weeks after Bennett scrapped plans for Walters to return to Red Hill on a short-term deal as the Broncos’ 2016 campaign threatened to spiral into complete disaster.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]Walters’s work with star halves Anthony Milford and Ben Hunt was seen by some as the missing ingredient and after a deal of public pressure Bennett approached Walters with the offer of a consultancy role as he desperately looked to address a mid-season slide which saw Brisbane drop from first to sixth between rounds 10 to 21.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333][FONT=&quot]But back-to-back wins in rounds 22 and 23 saw Bennett pull the offer off the table — a decision that left Walters bewildered, a sentiment that will have been amplified by news of his latest snubbing by the coach under whom he played 292 first-grade games and won a staggering five NRL titles.[/FONT][/COLOR] [/QUOTE]

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