In his most candid interview since becoming Wests Tigers coach, Marshall opens up on how he intends to lead his beloved club out of the wilderness.
It’s a cold and wet February afternoon and Benji Marshall sits in the corner of a cafe on Sydney’s lower north shore. He leans hard against the window with a Los Angeles Dodgers hat pulled down low, making him unrecognisable to the gaggle of people at the table next to him.
Why not retire to the comfy environs of the commentary box, eating gourmet sandwiches and banking a sizeable cheque each week as he was with Fox Sports?“The way I see it,” he continues, “you have to wake up every day with a purpose and reason why you do things. Without any disrespect to being on TV, which I loved doing, there’s no trophy at the end of the season. Being conditioned so long towards winning something, being competitive, you miss that when you retire.
“It’s easy until you have to make tackles,” Marshall smiles. “When we all played, we challenged each other. As a coach, you also need to be challenged by your assistants. What I like about those three blokes is they all played over 300 games, so they know what it takes to be a consistent first-grader and they’ve all had success. The players respect that they’re not being asked to do something we haven’t done.
When a minute’s silence was observed, Marshall buried his heads in his hands and wept. Teammates had to console him. Coaching soon enough became an itch that needed scratching. When he played under Wayne Bennett at Brisbane in 2017, part of his contract allowed him to do some development coaching. The same applied when he returned to the Tigers the following season., he returned to the Tigers as an ambassador, but relished the chance to work with some of the younger playmakers while juggling appearances on Fox Sports.
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