NRL 2021: Paul Kent on the players with a point to prove

Josh Hodgson, Tommy Turbo and Matt Moylan are among a number of NRL stars with a point to prove in 2021. But for Benji Marshall, life couldn’t be less complicated.

Legacies, by their nature, are a catalogue of defining moments.

Collected and organised into what constitutes a career, hopefully successful.

Since landing at Redfern, Benji Marshall has avoided the answer over and over again.

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Benji Marshall heads into 2021 with no pressure... but the same can’t be said for others.

What is his legacy? What is he hoping to achieve in this season at Souths?

He is 36 and the best he can answer is to say that he wants to contribute.

For Marshall, the young man’s flame went out a long time ago.

The drive for public accolades has long been replaced by an internal satisfaction.

Marshall trained like a Swiss army knife at Rabbitohs training on Monday. He slotted into the middle to help the Rabbitohs out, not as a dummy-half but more as a loose forward.

He doesn’t care much for legacy nowadays even though, with some irony, Monday’s positional switch continues to add to it.

“There’s no pressure on me,” he said simply.

Marshall’s Souths oddity has come too late to define his career. He heads into this season clear-minded.

The same can’t be said for every player, with this season shaping as career-defining for a number of high-profile NRL stars, driven by the twin threats of injury and performance.

Some make sense, some not always.

THE RETURNING RAIDER

Josh Hodgson will be key if the Raiders are to win a premiership.

For Josh Hodgson it seems a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Hodgson had largely been overlooked heading into this season, based on nothing more than an ACL injury last season that saw him miss most of last season.

Given the Raiders went out in the preliminary final last season, Hodgson will run out for Canberra like a new signing.

Tremendous forward depth around him does nothing but make him giddy. What’s left for Hodgson is to cement a legacy by leading the Raiders to a premiership.

WELCOME MATT

Like Hodgson, Matt Moylan returns from an injury lay-off but, unlike Hodgson, Moylan has something altogether different to prove.

Moylan returns this season having to make good on the early raps that had him earmarked as a future superstar, for which he has so far fallen short.

Before Moylan hit it big, a third-party sponsor was interested in getting involved in the Panthers and chief executive Brian Fletcher asked head of football Phil Gould, who was unequivocal. Matt Moylan and Bryce Cartwright were going to be superstars, Gould believed.

Both soon found themselves with big sponsorships and soon after Gould was vindicated.

For a short time anyway.

Moylan had undeniable talent, but was soon shifted to Cronulla after things soured at Penrith and has since struggled to live up to the billing.

Moylan heads into the final year of his deal at Cronulla and needs a season equal to his breakout year to maintain his big-money status within the game.

2021 could be Matt Moylan’s last year at the Sharks. Picture: Getty Images.

TITANIC SHIFT

Mal Meninga knew exactly what he was getting when he pursued David Fifita for the Gold Coast.

Meninga was already an Origin star in the mid-1980s when the Canberra Raiders opened the purse strings and offered Meninga a massive deal to leave Brisbane and play in the Sydney competition.

Channel 10 newsreader Ron Casey famously declared Meninga would fail miserably and the Raiders had done their cash.

Meninga took Canberra to its first grand final in his second season and had led the Raiders to three premierships, and a fifth grand final, by the time he retired in 1994.

It happened because once Meninga made it okay to leave Queensland to play for Canberra, the likes of Peter Jackson, Steve Walters, Kevin Walters and Gary Belcher to head down as well.

Meninga is hoping Fifita has a similar Pied Piper effect at the Titans.

TURBO’S TROUBLES

Tom Trbojevic is still so young but already plagued by injury.

Whether the hamstring was torn racing down the Manly Corso or not, nudge, nudge, Tom Trbojevic, 24, is more than just a million dollar investment at Manly.

He is the bellwether to their success. They are a finals team with Trbojevic there for the season and a long lament if he is not.

But not only are the Sea Eagles’ fortunes attached to a dodgy hamstring but, after a series of hamstring tears, so too is Trbojevic’s future.

LUKE’S LEGACY

The unfortunate statistic for Luke Brooks, as he enters his ninth season in first grade, is that the Tigers have never once made the playoffs under his stewardship.

It is far from all Brooks’ fault but, as the chief playmaker at the club, he cops the blame.

Good halves get their teams winning. Bad halves end up in the bush.

BACK IN THE HUNT

It is no surprise the players most under pressure are the playmakers.

For instance, Ben Hunt has no more excuses at St George Illawarra. Incoming coach Anthony Griffin has gone back a generation to the Hunt he coached in the Broncos under-20s and trusted that man to be his captain but, more importantly, his halfback.

A worrisome type, Hunt goes into this season completely at ease with the direction around him.

Will Ben Hunt find his best form?

But their lesson is in Marshall.

He understands the fascination others have for a legacy, the conversation we all have around it.

He has little patience for it, though.

“If I had finished three years ago I probably wouldn’t be talked about as positively then as I am now,” he said.

It took Marshall being unwanted for fans to realise they wanted him after all.

“I came back and played pretty much for nothing, because I just wanted to play,” he said.

“I didn’t want to give it away. And it actually helped me play better. For me, it’s about competing every day and showing that I can still play at that level.”

Marshall found purity in performance.

In a world filled with outside noise, in the measurement of others, he realised satisfaction comes ultimately from within.