Benji Marshall on how he rediscovered his love for the game by coaching juniors
FROM teen superstar to walking reputation, Benji Marshall’s journey through rugby league has been unique. But on his return to Wests Tigers, he’s found a new energy and a new purpose.
Opinion
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HE walked in on one of those normal afternoons when the young kids turn up kicking a ball around before training.
It is hard to say what happens to young footballers when Benji Marshall walks in. Even more when he asks if he can help do some coaching.
It happened earlier this season after Marshall signed with Wests Tigers. Monday afternoons he began going to Campbelltown to help the Magpies’ junior sides, the Harold Matthews and SG Ball, and Tuesday afternoons he was at Leichhardt Oval to help coach Balmain.
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It began last year, he says, when he got to the Last Chance Saloon, in his case Brisbane, and he began to think about where he was in life and what he wanted and how so much had changed, and a great emptiness came over him.
“To be honest,” he says, “I reckon I was lost for a while.”
It is a confronting comment from a man who carries one of the biggest reputations in the NRL.
At one point Marshall was his own franchise.
He came out of high school with a sidestep nobody had seen and with a game completely uncommon.
He was famous before he knew how to handle it. And in the end it became his burden.
Marshall played with a young man’s style. The high energy zip could never be sustained over a career and yet even when he began to age and fill out and slow he tried to be the player he was, not the player he was becoming.
“I was playing with a style that didn’t suit me and I didn’t enjoy it,” he says.
“The back end of the Tigers it wasn’t fun for me. It was genuine unhappiness.
“All the pressure that came with that, it all caught up with me.
“I started hating being that figure.”
Marshall began to feel like a fraud.
His opponents were playing a ghost. The crowd was seeing the reputation, not the reality.
It began to turn for Marshall after he knocked back a contract from St George Illawarra as part of the negotiations and they then withdrew it, offer off the table.
Nobody came calling until Wayne Bennett, knowing he would get Marshall for minimum wage, dialled his number.
Bennett oversaw Darren Lockyer’s transition from streak of mercury to the ballplayer he became and began to whisper the same words in Marshall’s ear.
“When I see you relaxed and happy in the dressing sheds you usually play better,” Bennett said.
Marshall took that with him. He has become a thinker as he has grown, a man more aware of his circumstances.
He began concentrating on enjoying his training, beginning each session with a laugh with his teammates.
He took the result out of his football and spoke to Bennett about helping the Broncos junior teams. It was a confronting experience.
Marshall signed with Wests Tigers while still in high school and was playing first grade at 17. He never played lower grades.
Yet when he began working with the junior Broncos he saw the struggle and the work that is common and nearly always overlooked.
“I never had to see the struggle,” he says.
“I never go to see that side, to see those who play for the love of the game. They were often the guys who turned up to training and trained the hardest.
“I could just play however I wanted. An appreciation of the game came back to me.”
Marshall was due at Leichhardt on Tuesday for Harold Matthews training but Tigers staff ordered him off the ankle he injured last Friday against Brisbane.
The juniors head into finals in a fortnight.
Once the NRL’s deep headache, there is a new energy at the club this season after opening round wins against Sydney Roosters and Melbourne and a controversial loss to Brisbane.
Tigers fans are energised.
“My script got rewritten,” he says.
It is a script reflected in his club. The chance for a do-over.
“At the start I was doing basics, how to set up catching, passing, playing square,” he says. “Just the basics of playing halves.”
He began working with the halves and hookers, before bringing the fullbacks in, then the backrowers ...
Each step building on the one that came before it.
Nobody knows the effectiveness of this better than Benji Marshall.
He has lived it.