Wests Tigers coaching transition: Benji Marshall under microscope after run of poor form
There’s a long list of champion players who have tried and failed at the coaching caper. As the Wests Tigers aim to avoid the spoon this year, Benji Marshall has been warned about what lays ahead.
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Benji Marshall has been warned that he needs to make coaching the No.1 priority in his life or he risks joining a long list of elite players who have failed to make the coaching transition.
Marshall’s future as Wests Tigers coach-in-waiting has come sharply into focus in recent weeks as the club has laboured, the shocking run of results prompting an external push to begin a review of the governance and senior management at the embattled club.
Marshall finds himself in the middle of a hornet’s test as speculation has mounted over the future of current head coach Tim Sheens and the planned handover to Marshall at the end of next season.
There has been talk that Sheens could go early, although he has strenuously denied it.
Yet Marshall continues to take on more influence with the Tigers as Sheens reduces his role in preparation for his protege to take the reins in November 2024.
Marshall has taken a deeper involvement in recruitment and largely steers the Tigers’ attack. He also continues to have a prominent role on social media, most recently sharing footage with his followers - he has nearly 200,000 on Instagram - of a holiday to Fiji during the bye round.
It is a delicate balance for Marshall as he prepares to become the man who will ultimately determine whether the Tigers can rediscover their halcyon days.
“All I know is that by the end of next year he will be ready,” Sheens said.
“He has handled it really well. He is the assistant coach - he is not the head coach. I am letting him run with certain things that I might have gone that way, he goes that way.
“My job is to coach him to make decisions and to help him. If he is wrong, he is wrong and we talk about it.”
Some of the greatest players in the game’s history have struggled to make the transition to coaching. Marshall was one of the best of his generation, a brilliant half who clicked turnstiles with his talents before he made the transition to the media.
His appointment as part of a coaching dream team with Sheens came from left field, but it was warmly received by the club’s supporters because it gave them a connection to their glory days.
The results so far have been underwhelming and as Marshall continues to take on more responsibility, the losses prompt inevitable questions over whether he can match his playing heroics in the coaching ranks.
Sheens insists Marshall has shown he can bond with his players with equal amounts of empathy and expectation.
“Most of them can’t understand how the average player can’t see what they can see,” Sheens said.
“But he is also empathetic towards his players. He understands no-one is perfect. There are a lot of things in coaching that you have to learn.
“When most people ask me if he will be a good coach, I say, ’Ask me in five years time when they reach 100 games’.
“If they are still doing it then, they’ve been through plenty of ups and downs, and they are well and truly on their way.
“There’s up and downs, recruiting, having issues like we have had in the last couple of weeks with injury on top of suspension on top of key players out.
“As Jack Gibson used to say, ‘The players have something to do with it’.
“If you are going to win things and go places, you have to have a healthy team.
“You can smell a good player and a good coach, but what happens in that 100 games can make or break you.”
Asked if he felt that putting Benji Marshall into the head coaching role only added more pressure on the Tigers legend, Immortal Andrew Johns said on Nine: “Yes. Look, you could have Tim Sheens, Wayne Bennett, Warren Ryan, Craig Bellamy there at the moment. But they just haven’t got the class players in key positions.
“Inexperienced and down on confidence, it’s just a really tough period for the Tigers. And I don’t know when they’re going to work their way out of it.’’
The Tigers are in Marshall’s hands. For all the talk over Sheens and Fulton, as it stands right now, Marshall will dictate whether the Tigers pull themselves out of their current mire.
It is Marshall who will have the final say on player recruitment, although that area of the club has become more clouded with the arrival of Fulton, who was handpicked by the board to oversee the rebuild of their roster.
There will be doubters. There always has been where Marshall is concerned.
Yet many thought he wouldn’t become a force after undergoing multiple shoulder reconstructions and Marshall proved them wrong.
“Sheens has been a great coach and I like to be respectful to Benji,’’ Balmain legend Garry Jack said.
“But the recruits they have brought in haven’t done much and now we’re without a halfback. You can bag (Luke) Brooks all you want, but he’s a pretty good halfback.
“It makes you wonder about recruitment. It’s not good and we’re going to a rookie coach, who has never coached before.
“Benji will need someone there to help him when he takes over because you couldn’t throw him out there by himself without any experience.
“And what if it doesn’t work? What happens then? You put three years in with Sheens and then you’ve got Benji for five years, what happens if it doesn’t work?
“Lots of great players don’t make great coaches.’’
Marshall’s social media presence shouldn’t be an issue but it may become one if the club can’t be turned around. Rightly or wrongly, it gives the impression of a coach whose mind is elsewhere.
The Tigers went into the bye round at a low ebb and some suggested Marshall would have been better placed using the time off to help improve the club’s fortunes.
“It has to be No.1,” a source told this masthead.
“You cannot go in there half-thinking, ‘Do I want it?”
Sheens is more confident. He can see some green shoots.
“Tactically he is good,” Sheens said,
“He is great with the guys, he is very clever with his salary cap recruitment - he knows what is going on, he won’t get caught with his pants down there.
“He is prepared to tell the truth, as tough as it might be. There is some great ethic in that, in what he is doing. It comes down to him being able to survive the ups and downs of the game.
“I have no problem that he has the potential to do big things.”
COACHING PRINCES TO PAUPERS
* Wayne Pearce (Balmain Tigers/Wests Tigers)
1994-2000
162 games - 60 wins, 99 losses, 3 draws, 37 per cent
* Jason Taylor (Eels, Rabbitohs, Wests Tigers)
2006-2017
140 games - 61 wins, 78 losses, 1 draw, 43.6 per cent
* Mal Meninga (Raiders)
1997-2001
125 games - 66 wins, 57 losses, 2 draws, 52.8 per cent
* Tommy Raudonikis (Western Suburbs)
1995-1999
115 games - 39 wins, 75 losses, 1 draw, 33.9 per cent
* Mick Cronin (Eels)
1990-1993
88 games - 33 wins, 53 losses, 2 draws, 37.5 per cent
* Bob McCarthy (Gold Coast Giants, Rabbitohs)
1988-1994
74 games - 16 wins, 55 losses, 3 draws, 21.6 per cent
* Brad Fittler (Roosters)
2007-2009
58 games - 25 wins, 32 losses, 1 draw, 43.1 per cent
* Wally Lewis (Gold Coast)
1992-93
44 games, 7 wins, 36 losses, 1 draw, 15.9 per cent
* Craig Young (St George Dragons)
1989-1990
44 games, 18 wins, 26 losses, 40.9 per cent
* Russell Fairfax (Eastern Suburbs)
1989-1990
36 games, 11 wins, 23 losses, 2 draws, 30.6 per cent
* Paul Langmack (South Sydney)
2003-2004
35 games, 5 wins, 29 losses, 1 draw, 14.3 per cent
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