NRL 2021: Benji Marshall and Sam Walker magic shows NRL’s natural beauty

The natural flair more accustomed to backyards than NRL fields was back at the weekend. As Paul Kent writes, it was beautiful to see.

2021 NRL Round 07 – Sydney Roosters v St. George Illawarra Dragons, Sydney Cricket Ground, 2021-04-25. Digital image by Gregg Porteous � NRL Photos

If there was victory over the weekend it belonged to the game that used to be played, that game invented in backyards that lasted until the streetlights came on, as the air was getting colder, when next try wins.

That was the way young boys once learned how to play the game and so, for a moment last weekend, we were all a little younger.

The evidence was early in the second half in Sunday’s game against St George Illawarra when Sam Walker, 18 and prodigious, took a nothing ball and looked far to his left where Josh Morris had the sun in his eyes and few expectations.

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Walker drifted and fired the ball hard to Morris, a backyard play.

The pass travelled a good 25m or 30m or more, sailing by several Roosters teammates, and with a catch Morris was on his way, headed up field.

In the Brewongle Stand and everywhere else around the Sydney Cricket Ground a disbelieving gasp went through the crowd.

Yes, came the realisation, they did just see that. The Dragons probably thought the same thing.

Two days earlier another backyard specialist, Benji Marshall, punched to the left through the Gold Coast defence and as he was being brought down he flipped a don’t-look-just-hope pass behind him that hit Alex Johnston in the belly and off Johnston went to score.

It was so unorthodox it completely fooled the Gold Coast defence.

Benji Marshall had the ball on a string against the Titans.

If it was anyone else it would be described as a fluke but Benji taught us long ago that anything is possible when the ball is in his hands.

What it says about today’s game remains to be seen.

Benji is the game’s oldest player, at 36, so an argument could be made he is a throwback.

Walker was the second youngest player of the weekend, just 24 days older than Reece Walsh, who debuted with the Warriors a couple of hours later, and so this might be a look at a whole new future.

Walker is unlike the other young playmakers in the game.

Too many young playmakers nowadays have the footy coached out of them by junior coaches who, driven by their own ambition, coach no mistake footy so they can rack up junior premierships.

In the scheme of things, it is counter productive.

So nowadays so many young halves play footy by looking beside them and behind them because all they are looking for is where their teammates are because all they are thinking about is running the play that was drilled into them all week.

Sam Walker produces a kick against St George Illawarra.

The moment they go unorthodox, when it does happen, they are praised for playing “eyes up” footy, when that is what they should be playing all along.

Few know how to do it anymore. It is why Andrew Johns marvelled at Walker’s youthful audacity on Sunday, saying, “He just plays.”

Few realise that Walker grew up playing, quite literally, backyard footy.

His father Ben and uncle Shane coached Ipswich Jets with a style borrowed from Duncan Thompson called contract football.

The contract it spoke of was to give the ball to a teammate in a better position to you, as simple as that, and it was all about playing to the spaces.

Space is not a new idea for rugby league. There was a time when the game was very much a man on man game until Warren Ryan began coaching towards the spaces, beginning by revolutionising the way teams defend.

In time, though, the game became so structured that the dial-a-halfbacks emerged, the kind you programmed in and sent off and who played with no instinct whatsoever.

Indeed, it is killing some clubs right now.

The Walkers never thought that way, and from a young boy Sam was encouraged to play, and they believed in it so much that they brought it into their coaching.

They had a drill at Jets training they actually called backyard footy. The brothers set up a training field with exactly the same dimensions as the backyard they grew up in.

To replicate where the fence used to run they set up alongside the fence at the Jets’ home-ground, and where there were trees in the backyard they stood up tackling bags.

Even Mum’s garden was recreated with the customary caveats, that Mum’s garden was out of bounds, nobody allowed to run through it.

The players were thrown into three on three drills and the speed was fast.

It taught them to be spatially aware and forced them, Ben said, to “use their imaginations” to find solutions to their problems.

This was no mistake-free footy. The Walkers encouraged mistakes, believing that you could not learn without errors.

Sam, Ben said the other day, “used to floss his teeth with them”.