NRL 2022: Benji Marshall ready to coach if Wests Tigers come calling

Wests Tigers great Benji Marshall says it would be a “dream” to coach his former club under the tutelage of Tim Sheens — he’s just waiting for the call.

DAILY TELEGRAPH 3RD DECEMBER 2021 EMBARGOED SUN FOR MON 6TH Pictured at West Tigers training facility in Concord ahead of the 2022 NRL season is Wests Tigers head of football Tim Sheens. Picture: Richard Dobson

Benji Marshall has declared that he wants to coach the Wests Tigers.

If the Tigers want him to be part of a coaching dream team with Tim Sheens with a view to eventually taking over, Marshall is all in.

“Yeah, I am ready,” Marshall told Fox League’s NRL360 on Tuesday night.

“The thing I have always done is back myself and if they go down that path where they want me to do it, I am all in.

“I love working there, I love it. But if this is real and it is an opportunity and they come to me with that, then I am in.

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Benji Marshall, right, is keen to coach Wests Tigers under the guidance of Tim Sheens. Picture: Gregg Porteous

“If the view is a genuine pathway to become a head coach ... for me, an NRL head coach is a dream job and to be able to be mentored by someone like Tim and learn under him with a chance to get there, if that is the route they want to go down with me, it is something I would be interested to explore.”

The Tigers are in the throes of searching for a replacement for Michael Maguire, who was sacked recently after failing to guide the club to the finals in his three years at the helm.

Sheens, the club’s head of football, is in charge of the search but he has been given the green light to take over himself and there have been suggestions that he wants Marshall and fellow 2005 grand final winner Robbie Farah to form part of his staff.

Marshall insists he has not been contacted by the club but says he would be open to having a conversation.

“The dream for me would be to be a coach and at the Wests Tigers would be the ideal situation,” Marshall said.

Benji Marshall said it would be a dream to coach Wests Tigers. Picture: Richard Dobson

“I know as much as you guys know — obviously it has been reported that Tim is going to get the job and he is going to mentor someone.

“Now if the opportunity for me was to be mentored under him with I suppose a pathway to become a head coach, it is something I would consider.

“I love my job and what I do now but that is an opportunity I may never get again. So if they did go down that path and asked me that, I would definitely be interested and consider that.”

Asked whether he would consider coaching at another club, Marshall said it was the Tigers or no one.

“Just the Tigers,” he said. “I love the club. I have been and gone a couple of times but ... it is in there. I want to see the club succeed and I genuinely believe Tim is the best option in there to turn it around.

“I believe I can have a genuine impact there. I am going to learn under Tim if they go with me. However long that is, it doesn’t matter. There is an opportunity here if they want me to go with Tim, it is a massive opportunity.”

Why 2005 reboot doesn’t click gears at Wests Tigers

-Paul Kent

We all should work at a place like the Wests Tigers at least once in our lives. If nothing else, you are always guaranteed future employment.

If there is a place you want to be sacked from it is the Tigers. It comes with a nice payout which often lasts just long enough before they call to bring you back.

The latest is the talk Tim Sheens is being positioned to return to the Tigers as head coach a decade after the club sacked him, for which he later sued, and where he was still being paid almost a year after being sacked.

Joining Sheens on the coaching staff will be Benji Marshall, who was sacked from the Tigers in 2013, returned in 2018, only to be sent off again in 2020.

And then return again in retirement as part of the coaching staff.

Just to show that an old idea is still a good idea, Robbie Farah is being mentioned as the third name in the new coaching structure.

Momentum is growing for Tim Sheens to take the reins at the embattled Wests-Tigers.

A bit like Marshall, Farah was sacked in 2016 only to return in 2018, for two seasons, and now works weekends riding shotgun alongside interim coach Brett Kimmorley.

That’s the good thing about the Tigers, winning isn’t so important, finals are not necessary, and sackings are only temporary.

And the payouts are just brilliant.

When Farah was still in his first instalment at the club even the hot dog sellers outside the ground were spruiking Farah was about to be sacked, the barking getting loud enough for long enough that Farah’s manager Sam Ayoub called the club for clarification.

No, no, no, Ayoub was told.

“Why would we treat a club legend like that?” argued chief executive Justin Pascoe.

Farah had graduated to become one of the two great figures in the merged club’s history, alongside Marshall.

So it seemed a reasonable enough defence from Pascoe, and one that didn’t appear to need reply from Ayoub.

Before lunch the very next day the Tigers put out a press release stating Farah was being released.

This came as something of a surprise to Ayoub, remembering his conversation from the day before, not to mention to Farah.

Support is also growing for Benji Marshall to up his involvement on the coaching side of things at the club.

In one of the great oversights that only the Tigers could be capable of, though, it emerged that before announcing his exit from the club the Tigers had failed to actually negotiate a release with Farah, which basically negated all the bargaining power the club had when they had to negotiate a payout.

So Farah got the lot.

And just two years later he was back again.

And now he might be back again.

The idea, it goes, first came up about a month ago where a journo asked Sheens over lunch if he might be interested in the job.

It was met with some mirth at the time. Even the Tigers thought it slightly absurd.

Sheens has also been at pains to say, at least publicly, he is not interested in being the head coach again, although behind the scenes the conversations appear to be slightly different.

Earlier this year Sheens did a question and answer night at the Sackville Hotel where he said several times that, despite his job as head of football at the Tigers, he considered himself a head coach first and foremost.

From the crowd, Paul the Count asked about the coaching, and asked if there was a chance Sheens might replace Michael Maguire. He is nothing if not a romantic.

Robbie Farah looms as the third piece of the coaching jigsaw puzzle at the struggling club.

Sheens said he was a head coach, that was his profession, and he would always be a head coach but here, now, with the Tigers, that was not what he was employed to do.

Everybody got a feeling of what he was trying to say.

And now it has all changed.

Since Michael Maguire was sacked as head coach last month Sheens has stated several times he has no interest in the head coaching job.

When I asked him how difficult it might be to attract a coach to the club, given it has become something of a graveyard for coaches since Sheens was sacked first time around — only Ivan Cleary has survived, and he left the Tigers — Sheens held no fears.

“I’ll be knocked over with applicants, don’t worry about that, Paul,” he said.

“The issue is trying to find the right guy to fit.”

Sadly, Sheens is still standing, having been knocked over by no one.

Penrith assistant Cameron Ciraldo knocked back a five-year deal, St Helens coach Kristian Woolf said no and Todd Payten has quietly been sounded out with no interest.

Other likely candidates now don’t seem to be so likely, and so the club is looking to reinvent 2005 again.

And again.

And again …