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.
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Famous quotes related to personal life:
“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)