Inevitable and impossible: Twin paths of Cameron Smith and Benji Marshall

Two modern greats are gearing up for remarkable milestone matches — and while they’ve trodden similar tracks, the journeys of Cameron Smith and Benji Marshall could not have been more different, writes Nick Campton.

Benji Marshall and Cameron Smith.

Cameron Smith has arrived at the 400-game mark, as we all knew he would, somewhere deep down.

The defining feature of Smith’s career — apart from its self-evident excellence — is his inhuman ability to just keep playing. Over and over, week after week, Cameron Smith is always here, doing the same Cameron Smith things. He exists in the nuts and bolts of the nuts and bolts and is proof that mastering the basics is an art form all of its own.

And when I say mastering them I do mean mastering them — Bruce Lee once said the man who has thrown one punch a thousand times is more dangerous than the man who’s thrown a thousand punches one time. Smith has thrown a thousand punches a thousand times. There is nothing he has not done so many times it is instinct.

There are precious few highlight reels for Smith out there because it’s hard to get excited about a pass from dummy half that arrives precisely when and where it is supposed to. There is no YouTube glory in ducking out of dummy half and committing the markers to open up that fractional space behind the play the ball. Kids don’t run down the park and practice using their eyes to draw a fullback to the other side of the field before dropping a kick in behind an unsuspecting winger.

Cameron Smith is gearing up for his 400th NRL game. Picture: Getty Images

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These are the tools of Cameron Smith’s trade, the weapons he has used to bend the very sport to his will like no other player in the modern era. They might not get shared on clips on Facebook and only the keen rugby league eye will pick up everything he’s doing but over time — over a set of six, a half, a game, a season, a career — the little things win every time and nobody, anywhere in the history of rugby league does the little things better or more often than Cameron Smith. His rivals have risen and fallen, but it always comes back to him.

Think about all the times you have watched Cameron Smith play and had the sense that he was in total control of what was going on. How many times has he seemed the absolute master of where his team was, what they were doing and what was to happen next? He touches the ball just about every play but it never feels as though he is overplaying his hand. He can slot into first receiver as easily as dummy half. There is nothing about rugby league he does not understand because, quite simply, he has played more of it than anybody else.

Smith is inevitability, a destiny and fate that is certain to arrive, the power of certainty wrapped in a purple jersey. He is the drop of water that, over eons, makes the stone smooth. This 400th game was as certain to arrive as his 100th, 200th and 300th. He does not get injured. He has been suspended once in 17 years. As the moss overtakes the stone, Smith has overtaken the record books. It took time, but Smith has nothing but time. Sixteen seasons and counting with 20 or more games will do that.

He ran down the point-scoring record the same way. Smith has never scored more than five tries in a season and he has passed 200 points in a season just once. He hasn’t scored more than three tries in a season since 2009.

Claiming the points-scoring record was an inevitability for Cameron Smith. Picture: Alix Sweeney

But the points keep coming and slowly but inevitably, Smith ran down Daryl Halligan, followed by Jason Taylor, then Andrew Johns and finally Hazem El Masri. You can sprint ahead all you like, you can hope Cameron Smith has stopped chasing. He might even vanish back over the horizon. But eventually you will stop, because nobody can go forever, nobody but Smith.

Other players may well play 400 games in the future but it can only be done for the first time once and this was always how it had to happen. There was no other way. Of all the great things Smith has achieved over his career none is more indicative of who he has been as a player than this. He is the finest player of his generation, the greatest dummy half in history and the most enduring force in rugby league in the 21st century.

I can think of few players more oppositely poised to Smith than Benji Marshall, who brings up 300 games this weekend. Smith plays as though he is as much machine as human, for years Benji Marshall played like he was too much of a human, too full of swagger and spirit and joyful, explosive brilliance. If there’s a pass, why not flick it? If it’s a flick, why not round the back? If it’s round the back, why not look the other way while you do it?

Benji Marshall’s flick pass to set up a try for Pat Richards lit up the 2005 NRL grand final.

What makes Marshall’s journey to 300 as remarkable as Smith’s journey to 400 is how unlikely the whole thing is. There have been so many times when Marshall’s time was supposed to be up.

He was almost done early, when shoulder injuries just about broke his spirit. He thought about retiring, he told Paul Crawley earlier this week, as the glorious memories and impossible belief of 2005 vanished into a haze of rehab, surgery and brief, stunted attempts to return to the game.

There was a game in Newcastle in 2008 when Marshall deadset looked like he’d forgotten how to run. He was limping through it, lame and hobbled. In the previous two seasons combined he played 22 games and had two shoulder reconstructions. Just playing looked painful, and it probably was — the mental scars ran deeper than the physical. He scored two tries though, and the Tigers won. I’ll never know how he did it.

From there, Marshall rose again. From 2009 to 2011 he had a fair claim to being the best player in the world, leading the Tigers back to the finals and becoming a New Zealand legend through his heroics at Test level. Even then, reaching 300 didn’t look likely — only once did Marshall play every game in a season, in 2010, that’s something he’s very proud of and rightly so, given his shoulders were held together with strapping tape and good intentions.

It was supposed to be over again, at the end of 2013, when Marshall seemed to be over the mountain and the time ran out for the Tim Sheens Tigers. They wanted to move on to a glorious future with a new batch of young fellas. Marshall wasn’t old, he was only 28, but the Tigers didn’t want him anymore and rugby league, it seemed, had no further use for his talents.

He joined the Auckland Blues and that could have been it — he wasn’t great shakes at the 15-man game but he was all right, passable, good enough to get by. Maybe good enough to play second division in France or Japan or somewhere else far away from the game that made him great and was so enriched by his presence.

But it was all over after half a season and he came back, with the Dragons oddly enough, and after three seasons there it was supposed to be over again. His contract ran out and nobody wanted him. He was the oldest 31-year-old in the world, with legs that couldn’t keep up with him anymore.

Benji Marshall looked finished after his time with the Dragons came to an end. Picture: Mark Evans

Wayne Bennett took him in at Brisbane, with no promises or guarantees, and Marshall rose again, rediscovering a love of the game that he’d lost a little bit and reinventing himself in the process. Nobody can be young and fast and wild forever, not even Benji Marshall, and that year in Brisbane showed the change in him as a player.

He can still play that crazy shit if he has to, not all the time though, and now, in a stunning upset, he’s the wily old fox, the elder statesman who gets by on experience, guile and making the smart choice. His long-kicking game, non-existent in his younger days, is now one of his great strengths. He puts up bombs that escape the confines of the stadium, he does the unglamorous stuff at first receiver and the passes don’t go round the back anymore unless they have to.

So when his contract ran out at Brisbane and it almost looked over again, the Tigers brought him home, to lead a new generation and be the steady hand young Benji never had.

Benji Marshall returned to the Tigers as a different player. Picture: AAP

In one of the great rugby league ironies, he is now the steady hand alongside Luke Brooks, who is the halfback the Tigers have been waiting for since Scott Prince left town all those years ago.

For a measure of how things have changed, check out his Test return against Tonga last month. Shaun Johnson, who owes so much to Marshall in terms of style, was the dynamic playmaker and Marshall was the first-receiver, the on-field general who led the boys around the park, put kicks over the sideline so they could walk to the scrum and generally did all the smart things, the boring but vital things that need to be done. The 17-year old from Keebra Park wouldn’t have believed his eyes — old Benji has become the player young Benji always needed beside him.

Benji Marshall slips Jake Clifford's grips . NRL; North Queensland Cowboys Vs West Tigers at 1300Smiles Stadium. Picture: Alix Sweeney

Young Benji went to a 21st the night before the 2005 grand final and stopped at Maccas on the way home. Old Benji would probably be in bed by 10pm.

Farah made a great point when talking about Marshall earlier this week — he said Marshall understands his own limitations and plays to them accordingly. I think the tipping point for Marshall was when he realised he couldn’t rely on his speed and footwork anymore, he had to get by on all the football knowledge he’d accumulated, drop back into more of a distributing role. Being willing to do that speaks volumes of the kind of player he is, of his true understanding of the game and his place within it.

Playing 300 games isn’t the herculean feat it once was. When Marshall debuted only five players had done it — now 35 players have gone that far. But Marshall should treasure it more than most because of the places he’s been, the things that have happened and the amount of times it seemed impossible. But then again, when has something being impossible ever stopped Benji Marshall from doing it?

Originally published as Inevitable and impossible: Twin paths of Cameron Smith and Benji Marshall