Thank you Benji Marshall for leaving rugby league in a better place

DEAR Benji, we know your game, your brand, even your footy card stocks have taken a hit - but we can't let you go without saying thanks.

DEAR Benji,

Mate, we know farewells this ugly are usually reserved for the electric chair.

Understanding how as you saddle up to a bar somewhere for that last Mad Monday as an NRL player, your game, your brand, even your footy card stocks - once worth three Cooper Cronks in any playground swap - have taken the kind of hit that sees medicabs called.

But still, we can't let you go without saying thanks.

For while it may have finished uglier than a mud fence, while you disappeared from the game in Townsville in a side conceding 50 points, we league fans still have plenty to be thankful for. 

Like how many little 'uns are stepping right now because of you? How many schoolboys growing smaller than they'd like, or without that father they've never known, will suck it up and persist because ... well, you did.

Five times that bung shoulder of yours was operated on. And five times you fought back. An effort that had Tim Sheens once tell us, in no small rap, how you were the toughest footballer he ever coached.

So thank you.

Thanks for that flick pass in '05. For every jinking, stepping, smiling run.

And thanks for taking New Zealand, back in 2010, to the top of the rugby league world when everyone but you thought international footy was dead.

So, sure, yours is an end that proves fairytales are for little girls in pink dresses. But Mad Mondays around the country are filled with footballers who deserved a happier goodbye.

Take Scotty Prince, who after 15 years, two broken legs and a funeral for the old man has debunked all notions of Mt Isa toughness only being found on the back of a bull.

Or Shaun Berrigan, the gritty utility who disappeared in Canberra Sunday night with more than 300 games and 14 Test caps - while everyone talked Blake Ferguson and Ricky Stuart.

Up north, Dallas Johnson, despite surviving more knockouts than can be found on the Cronulla Mermaids roster, will farewell footy from the sidelines.

Same deal Matt Cooper who, apart from being a bloody good footballer, also gave our wives all the eye candy of a body which, in retirement, will surely see him fronting Good Morning Australia with "You got a door, you got a gym".

But that's the great thing about footy Benji, it's never been how you go out that counts. No, it's what you leave behind.

So thanks for leaving rugby league better than you found it.