Comment: Why Benji Marshall era at Wests Tigers is already doomed

He’s only just taken the reigns as the new coach of the Wests Tigers, but the Benji Marshall era could already be doomed.

New Tigers coach Benji Marshall has a tough job ahead of him. (Photo by Izhar Khan/Getty Images)

COMMENT

You wouldn’t even need to change the Wests Tigers name if the club was relocated to Perth.

Sure, shifting the joint venture 4000km away to a new timezone is a running joke, but it will begin appealing to Tigers fans very soon if whispers about the Benji Marshall era are anything to go by.

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Saturday’s drought-breaking win over the Dolphins in Marshall’s unofficial debut as head coach was a merciful pause for supporters, with the 24-23 triumph providing a glimpse in to a Benji-esque future of vibrance and flukey short kick-offs.

But barely 24 hours after Api Koroisau’s winning conversion bounced through off the crossbar, rumours about the new coach were already leaking from inside the Tigers mausoleum.

According to Danny Weidler in Sunday’s Sydney Morning Herald, powerbrokers are already concerned whether Marshall has the work ethic to withstand the role’s exacting extra-curricular tasks of dealing with media and Justin Pascoe.

New Tigers coach Benji Marshall has a tough job ahead of him. (Photo by Izhar Khan/Getty Images)

It’s a breathtaking development as seldom does a workplace quibble over how much overtime a bloke is punching-in before he’s on the clock, nor scour the fine print on their own cooling-off period to undermine a favourite son- but we must remember who we are talking about here.

This is the Wests Tigers, a place where if there’s smoke, there’s firings. A club whose idea of ‘patience’ is generously granting a coach until Thursday to clear out his desk.

Such rumours about royalty like Benji elsewhere would be dismissed as scuttlebutt, but at the Tigers it can only be from two sources: skulduggery, or Scott Fulton.

Either way, it’s hardly what a new coach deserves in the honeymoon stage of their career, especially at a cannibal convention like Wests.

The opening months of a new tenure should be the happiest moments of a coach’s life outside of premierships and payouts, the only time when goodwill is strong enough to drown out Lee Hangipantelis fatefully affirming your job security on every radio station in the city.

If the Tigers past is anything to go by, these whispers aren’t whispers- they’re a prospectus.

The club likely has Marshall’s replacement already lined up, and they’ve probably sacked him too.

And if this is the shaky foundation of the former great’s tenure after only a few days, imagine the Jenga tower he’ll be operating on if there’s wooden spoons and manic impulse purchases.

Imagine the noise when he oversees a 14 point SpoonBowl defeat to the Dragons and has to defend the club’s $1.4m contract for Tevita Pangai Jr?

And won’t somebody think of the fans?

Marshall with outgoing Tigers halfback Luke Brooks. (Photo by Izhar Khan/Getty Images)

Tigers people would’ve hoped the club’s self-destabilisation was finally excised with Tim Sheens, the man who devoutly lived the Tigers creed by hiring himself on the urgings of a tabloid journalist before firing himself on the same source.

But if it didn’t happen after Mick Potter, Jason Taylor, Michael Maguire and the 62 farewells for Robbie Farah, then why would it now?

No wonder fans will be longing to be banished to Perth, if only to witness their club pass in a dignified manner on the edge of the desert.

However, it’s not all gloom for Marshall.

At least when he is inevitably held culpable for the club’s problems circa 2000-present, he’ll receive a barbecue.

Which is good, because there’s nothing like a grill to show gratitude for working under a bunch of thick pork chops.

- Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.