News coming out that Wayne Bennett has signed a 4 year deal with Newcastle Knights from next season. Suprised by that as I thought Russell Crowe would have thrown any amount of money at him to land the Rabbitohs job.
It was pretty much a 2 horse race for his services which makes me think the Maguire rumours were just a way for souths to throw off their plans to get Bennett.

or maybe Madge and Bennett were competing the Rabbits job and Madge won out?

souths did offer him alot including the use of his own private jet whenever he wanted it which i think was matched by the knights. i have yet to see anything confirming it though and knowing what bennett is like he will be loving the fight over his services

well word in Aus is now that McGuire will be signing with Souths, sorry Wigan but he's got work to do at a bigger, more famous club..

No-one doubts that he'll be going home. It just happens that Souths are the only team Down Under who currently can't attract an NRL-based coach.

And watching the rabbitohs the last few games there utter garbage so i think they need a quality coach.

we have a "NRL" Coach, he's name is John Lang

He will, however, be retiring at years end, given we're only five rounds in, i'd say we have plenty of time to attract another Australian coach ( lets face it, there's not much quality amongst the English equivalent), so the search begins, we like the look of this "Madge" fella

Maguire is a good coach, but if Bennett said he wanted the job, do you think they would even interview anyone else? Different class from anyone else in the world

No. Without doubt Souths would have preferred Bennett, but they didn't have what it took to attract him.