The famously taciturn 65-year-old will bid to extend his record to eight NRL titles as a coach on Sunday, when his Brisbane Broncos take on the North Queensland Cowboys in the title-deciding grand final.
Emotions will run high in front of 80,000 fans at Sydney's Olympic stadium, but Bennett can be expected to wear his usual sphinx-like expression in the coaches' box and barely let it slip from kickoff to the final whistle.
Another championship might seem ho-hum for a man who has won all seven of his previous grand finals, but Bennett may afford himself a rare smile of self-satisfaction.
Having last won the title with St. George-Illawarra in 2010, Bennett was written off as a coaching force last year after a barren three-year stint with the Newcastle Knights.
Some pundits even accused him of being too old and out of touch with the demands of the modern game.
The magic has come flooding back on his return to the Broncos, however, where he coached the club to six premierships from 1988-2008.
"What separates him from other coaches is his ability to give you self-belief and confidence as a player and the way he builds that on the back of hard work," former Brisbane captain Gorden Tallis told local media this week.
Though a former policeman with a disciplinarian streak, Bennett is also revered as a father-figure by his players and many give him credit for helping them clean up their act on and off the field.
"I don't think there's much difference between them and your children," Bennett, once named Australia's 'Father of the Year' in the 1980s, told local radio earlier this year.
"You spend so much time with them, particularly when they come to you young ... so you have a fair influence on their life and they certainly rely on you for a lot of things."
Bennett could rely little on his own father when growing up in Warwick, a dusty country town in southeast Queensland.
An alcoholic with gambling problems, his father would often desert his family for days, leaving Bennett and his siblings hiding under their beds when debt collectors came knocking.
After his father left for good, Bennett took it upon himself to raise his family, starting as a 13-year-old meatworker before joining the police cadets at the age of 16.
"I learnt my management skills in the police force, and from the other guys (officers) who had your back," Bennett, an avowed teetotaller, said in an interview. "You trusted them."
A rangy 6ft-3in (1.90m) winger, Bennett represented Queensland and toured New Zealand as an Australian international in the 1970s before his coaching career took flight in the following decade.
Although a peerless man manager with the gift of empathy, Bennett quickly showed himself unafraid to make tough calls when he became coach of the inaugural Broncos side in 1988.
He dumped Wally Lewis as captain in 1990 and the player soon left when his salary demands were ignored.
Bennett's hard-line stance was condemned but he would lead the Broncos to the premiership in 1992 and to another five titles over the next 15 years. His last in 2006 came after he sacked all of his assistant coaches the season before.
A falling-out with Broncos management saw Bennett head to the Dragons and after another ruthless clean-out, he delivered the underperforming club their maiden title as a joint venture in 2010.
His brand of tough love was felt early on his return to the Broncos when a veteran player was billed $40 for misplacing his club-issued trousers during the off-season.
Bennett called it breaking down a culture of entitlement, small details that have helped galvanise a team never expected to challenge for the championship.
"Players get so much and I am happy for them to get it," Bennett said.
"But I don't want them abusing the system."
(Editing by Greg Stutchbury)
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