Time to anoint Marshall as a rugby league knight
FORGET that NRL grand final flick pass – though Wests Tigers fans never will.
It’s Benji Marshall’s brilliance in the 2008 Rugby League World Cup final that earns him a perch beside All Blacks Richie McCaw and Dan Carter on New Zealand’s sporting totem.
The curtain has come down, after 346 games, on the career of the greatest Kiwi to play in the NRL. There will be no more final bows despite our clamour for an encore.
Who can begrudge the Whakatane wonder boy his rest after 19 years’ toil in one of the world’s toughest sporting competitions.
It’s mind-boggling to muse that Marshall won a NRL grand final in 2005, and came agonisingly close to another on Sunday night, some sixteen years later.
Make no mistake, if this bloke had been born in the back of Bourke rather than the Bay of Plenty, Benji Marshall would be a future Rugby League Immortal.
Plenty of Kiwis – Stacey Jones, Ruben Wiki and Sonny Bill Williams included – have been deadset NRL standouts, but none has left as iridescent and indelible a mark on the global rugby league public as Marshall.
Flick through an interview with any star NRL back today and they’ll admit they grew up striving to emulate Benjamin Quentin Marshall, New Zealand’s greatest export to Australia since the Closer Economic Relations agreement.
Australians tend to regard the NRL as the sport’s be-all and end-all, thus Marshall will forever be revered for that audacious, outrageous offload for Pat Richards’ title-clinching try in Wests Tigers’ Grand Final win over the Cowboys in 2005.
A stringbean Kiwi – still only 20 – collected a ball from Brett Hodgson inside his own 20m zone.
Clapping on the after-burners, he sped past one tackler, stepped another, and burned a third before drawing a fourth.
With Richards looming, Marshall flicked the deftest of inside passes, a gossamer-winged creation so perfect it should still have its own gallery in Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
Richards raced away for one of the greatest of grand final tries from, arguably, the event’s most exquisite assist.
But it was a much more prosaic act that marks Marshall out for an inevitable place in New Zealand’s Sports Hall of Fame – his game-turning try in the Kiwis’ first and only Rugby League World Cup final triumph.
How good was Marshall on that November Fireworks night in Brisbane?
He was an absolute cracker, his manof-the-moment status crowned by creating and scoring the go-ahead try.
Marshall bamboozled Billy Slater with a high kick.
The Kangaroos fullback flung the ball infield to avoid being bashed by The Beast, Manu Vatuvei.
Lurking like a hyperactive greyhound sniffing for crumbs at a level 3 picnic, Marshall scooped up the loose ball to gleefully dot down.
Marshall’s score earned the Kiwis a 22-16 lead and the standoff sensation kept pulling the strings to close out their first victory over Australia in nine tests.
Another towering bomb created the carnage that led to Adam Blair’s coffin-nail late try, than an emotional Marshall leapt into Issac Luke’s arms at referee Ashley Klein’s final whistle blast.
Marshall’s virtuoso display must be seen in context. Just 23, he was best on ground that day – no mean feat when Australia fielded Slater, Greg Inglis, Darren Lockyer, Johnathan Thurston and Cameron Smith – all potential Immortals.
The Australians had set out to “Bash Benji’’ – a covert campaign revealed by a carping Kangaroo to a compliant home press.
The banter got Marshall’s dander up. Especially when the anonymous yapper crowed the Kiwi kid would be quaking in his boots.
“When they said I was scared, I was a little bit hurt because I don’t think I am a scared player, I was just lacking a bit of confidence [in earlier World Cup matches],’’ Marshall later said.
“If anything, it helped me want to run the ball more and spurred me on.”
‘Bash Benji’ backfired bigtime. The Aussies barely laid a finger on him.
They couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle.
The Kiwis’ feat ranks higher, for my money, than any of the All Blacks’ three Rugby World Cup final wins because the All Blacks weren’t underdogs. Only the Black Caps’ recent world test championship victory over India comes anywhere near matching the Kiwis’ vanquishing of an iconic outfit with a better international record than the All Blacks.
Which brings us back to the comparison between Benji
Marshall, Dan Carter and Richie McCaw.
Marshall played longer than both All Black legends. He was as dazzling a ball runner and as skilled a passer as Carter and needed to muster as much courage as McCaw to play on for another 13 or so years after five shoulder reconstructions.
Now we must make do with our memories. Still, a Marshall highlights reel would make Sir Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Series seem a cinematic ‘short’.
Nor will this proud Ng i Tuhoe warrior – remember his tears when asked to captain the Kiwis in 2019 after years in the test wilderness? – be lost to our screens.
Judging by his NRL 360 appearances, Marshall is a TV star in the making, the perfect successor to Peter Sterling, the just-abdicated prince of expert analysts.
While his future life may be based on the other side of the Tasman, that shouldn’t stop the New Zealand Government (which has criminally neglected rugby league for ultimate national honours) tapping Marshall on the shoulder to the cry, “Arise, Sir Benji’’.