NRL supercoach Wayne Bennett has confirmed long-running rumors that his current relationship with Dale Cage began while he was still alive and married to his wife of more than four decades.
The seven-time premiership coach and former Father of the Year opened up candidly about his affair with Ms Cage, 22 years his junior, in a recently released biography The Wolf You Feed by sports journalist Andrew Webster.
Seven years ago, Daily Mail Australia revealed the identity of Bennett’s new lover. The footy icon sent shockwaves through the NRL by confirming reports his 42-year marriage to wife Trish had ended.
Mr. Webster’s book sheds light for the first time on how the relationship with Cage began. Bennett coached the Newcastle Knights and mother-of-three Cage was the manager of long-time club doctor Neil Halpin’s practice
The pair met in late 2013 when Bennett burst into the doctor’s office to inquire about unpaid medical bills just as Cage was about to leave for lunch.
Wayne Bennett (second from left, with Dale Cage) has confirmed that his relationship with partner Dale Cage (left) began in early 2014 while he was still married
The pair can thank then-Knights boss Nathan Tinkler for bringing them together at the end of 2013, when the club suddenly stopped paying the players’ bills.
At the time, Cage had worked for Dr. Halpin in his practice at Knights Administration Headquarters for twenty years.
Bennett had confronted Halpin’s “grumpy secretary” about why appointments were being denied for his injured players.
“I’m here for Dale,” Bennett said to the woman at the front desk.
A curt Cage said, “Well, you found her. But maybe you should make an appointment, because I’m going to lunch.’
A surprised Bennett responded, “Oh, you’re Dale. You’re not what I expected.”
Cage asked, “What did you expect?”
He replied, “Someone who was old and grumpy.”
Bennett came to her for lunch and, according to Cage, was “surprised by my self-confidence.”
Four days later, the medical bills were paid and the pair became “best friends.”
“There was an instant connection,” Cage told Webster.
Bennett visited Cage at her workplace so often with two cups of coffee that Dr. Halpin told him, “I’ll have an extra hot latte.”
Bennett confirms in the book that his friendship with Cage grew into a romance in early 2014.
“Dale was a distraction to everyone because no one thought I would do what I did,” he recalls
“But it’s never stopped me from coaching.”
At the time, Bennett was considered a family man known for his glowing praise of his wife Trish.
She was the primary carer of their two adult disabled children in Brisbane while he coached 1076km away in Wollongong and later Newcastle for six years.
Dale Cage (pictured) was first linked to NRL supercoach Wayne Bennett in 2016, two years after their relationship began
Wayne Bennett was still with his wife Trish (pictured together in 1999) when he and his current partner began their relationship in 2014
When Bennett left the Knights at the end of the 2014 season to return to his hometown to coach the Brisbane Broncos, Cage went with him.
Nearly two seasons would pass until Bennett was forced to publicly admit his marriage had ended when confronted by reporters during the Broncos’ 2016 finals campaign.
‘We made it to the 2015 grand final – I took her out then. The next year we made it to the semi-finals. The preliminary final the following year. The Broncos didn’t like Dale, but they all knew Trish well. I understand,” Bennett recalled.
‘It didn’t matter to my players. There was one person who put himself in that place as judge and jury.
“There were staff there who were segregated. I wasn’t Robinson Crusoe. But different rules apply to Wayne. That has always been there. Wayne has never been to that other place; he is always judged differently. That’s no problem. He handled it.”
Bennett insists that others’ judgment of him was not difficult.
‘People in greenhouses are not allowed to throw stones. We all have the right to make our own decisions, okay?” he tells Webster in the book.
“If I made a decision that you think I shouldn’t have made, then that’s none of your business.
‘You can use your own judgment about this.
‘The journalists have absolutely nothing against me. I’m not a gambler. I’m not a drinker, I’m not a womanizer who’s had a fight, blues, whatever.’
Not all his former players were happy with his new relationship, with at least one party siding with Bennett’s wife.
“What about this guy,” an ex-player told Webster at the time.
“It’s a shame he did this Trish.”
Bennett has worked with former secretary and mother of three Dale Cage since 2014 (pictured)
Until the breakdown of their marriage in 2016, Wayne Bennett credited his great success as an NRL coach to his wife Trish (pictured with their three children)
For many other former players, Bennett’s infidelity remains a taboo subject and no one wants to talk to Webster about it.
‘We all fail at some point. He is still an exceptional man,” another added
Cage added that while some at the Broncos tried to make her feel welcome, she described the entire club as toxic.
“It was the worst time of my life,” she said.
‘He liked me coming to matches and events: I wanted to stay at home and be a hermit.
“People took sides and Wayne quickly found out who was his friends and who wasn’t.”
While Bennett won’t name one person at the Broncos — whom he described as “judge and jury” — the finger is often pointed at a former longtime friend and then at Broncos boss Paul White, who fired Bennett via voicemail two years later . 2018.
White denies firing Bennett because of the off-field drama.
“I am not the moral police,” White says in the book. ‘I have never made a moral judgement. I thought I was a good support (for Wayne). He completely misinterpreted that.’
Wayne Bennett’s partner says she was called a ‘homewrecker’ when it was revealed she had started a relationship with married rugby league super coach
The biography notes that Bennett was “as white as a ghost” when he met Cage to tell her that the breakup of his marriage was about to be made public.
On the morning the news broke, former Broncos star turned club coach Allan Langer jokingly called Bennett at 3am and asked ‘is Hugh Hefner there?’, referring to the late Playboy publisher.
Two days later, after the news broke, Daily Mail Australia revealed that Cage was Bennett’s new love interest and the couple became the biggest story in Brisbane.
A few days later, Bennett, accompanied by Cage, flew to Sydney to attend the private funeral of his old mentor, league legend Ron Massey.
The Wolf You Feed: Wayne Bennett – The Man, The Myth, The Mayhem by Andrew Webster is published by Macmillan Australia
Webster writes that some mourners suspect the service was private to protect Bennett and his new partner from further public scrutiny.
The couple became ‘Instagram official’ in 2017 when Cage posted a photo of himself with Bennett at Cox Plate Day in Moonee Valley in a Ladbrokes marquee.
Another photo taken on the same days shows her arm-in-arm with Langer, one of the few on the Broncos to welcome Cage into the fold.
Six years later, Cage is still branded online as a “homewrecker.”
“I experienced a lot of abuse online at the time and it still happens,” she tells Webster.
‘No one asked me for my side of the story. It was really weird.
“All these things have been published and said about me and I’m thinking, ‘Why hasn’t anyone called me to check the facts or get my side of the story.’ Not one person. Maybe they were too scared to call me.”
The Wolf You Feed: Wayne Bennett – The Man, The Myth, The Mayhem by Andrew Webster is published by Macmillan Australia and released on September 12. MSRP: $37.