He was in a jovial mood. Most of the stories he told about characters he’d coached, the likes of Allan Langer and Wendell Sailor among them, had the audience in stitches.

There was one moment, however, where his face turned the shade of dead serious most of us are more familiar with. The topic? Current Queensland coach Kevin Walters.

“Kevin Walters is a very, very much underrated player in our game,” Bennett said, with emphasis on the second ‘very’.

Walters has always been in someone else’s shadow. Within his own family he had older brother Steve who changed the way dummy-halves play the game. 

Throughout his playing career, he sat somewhere in the Wally Lewis vacuum as Langer’s sidekick at a time Alfie was the face of Broncos franchise and of Queensland rugby league. 

By the time Langer retired, Darren Lockyer had moved into the role of Broncos and Queensland flag-bearer.

For the Maroons, he was a long-time assistant to the most successful Origin coach of all time in Mal Meninga, again walking in the wake of giants.

Paul Green had to knock back the Maroons gig before the QRL went with Walters as coach for last year’s series.

It’s part of a familiar story. Walters has always been underrated, undervalued, underappreciated but it would be unwise for NSW to do the same this season.

To plenty of people, he remains the likeable smart alec who sits across from Laurie Daley on NRL 360 but, as Bennett said that night, Walters is a winner.

In fact he’s one of the best winners the game has seen. His 198 wins at club level came at a rate less than one per cent off that of the game’s all-time wins leader Cameron Smith. 

Until Lockyer’s last ever finals match in 2011, Walters’ record of 34 final appearances was top of the overall list. And then there’s the six premierships he won in his career. 

Yes he was part of a great Broncos era, but amid all the huge names that came and went, he was the only player who was there for all of it. 

People like Bennett, Gorden Tallis and Lockyer have said that Walters was the glue that held those teams, and all the different personalities and egos, together. 

You don’t become the only mainstay at a club that won five premierships without knowing a thing or two about winning. 

NSW should win this year’s Origin series. With the side they’ve selected, a loss would be their worst failure in a long run of outs. 

But anyone thinking it will come through a loosening of the guard at the Queensland helm should think again.