Personal Life
Wayne Bennett's brother Bob Bennett has also coached rugby league at international level with the Papua New Guinea team.
Bennett's wife, Trish, is the sister of his former teammate and one-time Kangaroo captain Greg Veivers and English Rugby League stalwart Phillip Veivers. Wayne has won a Queensland Father of the Year award for helping to raise two of his children with disabilities. He appeared on Australian Story on ABC TV in 1999 to tell the story of his family life. Given Bennett's usual reticence, this deeply personal documentary was one of the most popular programmes in the history of that show.
Former Bronco, Maroon and Kangaroo, Ben Ikin is Wayne Bennett's son-in-law, having married Bennett's daughter Elizabeth.
With journalist Steve Crawley he wrote Don't Die with the Music in You whose title refers to a quote from the American intellectual Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. regarding failure to meet one's potential. The likes of Steve Waugh, Lachlan Murdoch, David Gallop, John Singleton and Jack Gibson attended the book's launch at the Australian Museum in Sydney on 7 May 2002. It has become one of the best selling books about rugby league in Australia's history (ISBN 0-7333-1107-5, ABC Books Australia). It went on to sell over 100,000 copies.
Bennett has also written a weekly column in The Australian. His second book, The man in the mirror was released in November, 2008, soon after the New Zealand Kiwis' World Cup victory.
Read more about this topic: Wayne Bennett (rugby League)
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Make me thy Loome: thy Grace the warfe therein,
My duties Woofe, and let thy word winde Quills.
The shuttle shoot. Cut off the ends my sins.
Thy Ordinances make my fulling mills,
My Life thy Web: and cloath me all my dayes
With this Gold-web of Glory to thy praise.”
—Edward Taylor (1645–1729)