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So Benji’s gone – what does this mean for rugby league moving forward?
On September 8 this year Benji will officially hang up his boots and, if the rumours are true, head ‘across the dutch’ to the country of his birth to try his hand at the other oval-ball code – rugby union, with sport’s other perennially under-achieving Blues, in Auckland.
Much has been written over the last couple of weeks since Marshall announced he would be leaving the Wests Tigers and, by extension, the NRL competition itself.
Benji will be sorely missed by fans everywhere – not just those of Tigers or Kiwi affiliation, but by the entire rugby league-loving community.
Financially, the full impact of Marshall’s absence will be realised through drops in ticket and merchandise sales and, perhaps more significantly, sponsorship investment.
Above all though, the infectious way in which he played the game, the ‘razzle dazzle’, unpredictable style that set him apart from all others and his all-round good-guy demeanour will leave a lasting legacy for all of those who had the pleasure of watching him play.
The great game of rugby league will move on – it always does.
Indeed, last weekend at Leichhardt Oval, grief-stricken razzle-dazzle fans everywhere were given hope and a glimpse into a bright future.
A new, improved Benji Marshall – heir to the ‘King of the Kids’ throne, one Shauny J (Shaun Johnson, for the uninitiated), stepped forth and anointed himself as the man to fly the flag of flair for fans of footwork, fast hands and general ‘flashy stuff’.
Anything starting with the letter ‘f’ basically.
In Johnson, the New Zealand Warriors have unveiled a player of such rare quality he is being lauded as potentially a better prospect than the legendary Kiwi captain.
A hotted-up, modified version of Benji with the suspension lowered, mag wheels and fluffy dice to boot.
Questioned recently by rugby league Week on the merits of being Benji’s heir-apparent, Johnson was clearly chuffed but humble in response.
“I’m really starting to see it, where a kid will get a little buzz out of seeing me. I’m not really used to that yet, because I’ve been that kid in that position seeing the likes of Benji or Stacey Jones and I’d get that massive thrill out of it,” he said.
“I don’t think I’m anywhere on Benji’s level, but I’m happy if I can contribute that to the game in his absence. I guess that’s a real perk of what I’m able to do.”
So, what of Benji and the steady demise of his lethal attacking game?
A large part of the reason Benji has been a shadow of his former self over the last couple of NRL seasons is his relative lack of size, physical strength and power, relative to the emerging levels opposition players are now attaining.
Crippling shoulder and knee injuries and the associated rehabilitation that come with them have not helped Benji’s cause and it is a credit to the man that he has been able to achieve such longevity in the game.
But there is no escaping the fact his bag of tricks no longer have the same impact they did back in 2005 when the Tigers won the premiership.
That season the Tigers won 18 of 27 matches Marshall played in, for a win-loss percentage of 67 percent.
Over the last two seasons the Tigers have won just 17 from 39 matches, or 43 percent, with Marshall at the helm.
Marshall’s trade-mark step and flick-passes are no longer the threat they were several years ago, with defensive lines now much better organised and strength and conditioning and improved tackling techniques limiting the opportunities afforded to Marshall and players of similar stature.
The modern-day player is bigger, stronger and faster than his predecessors. This is an evolutionary inevitability and something that is sometimes over-looked.
A potent illustration of that fact is seen on the flanks of any current NRL side where the Akuila Uate’s and Jorge Taufua’s of this world reign supreme.
100 kilo-plus men-mountain who bust tackles and make line-breaks are now less the exception and more the norm.
Brisbane Broncos coach Anthony Griffin this week made the tough call and dropped the comparatively wiry Corey Norman from his starting side, replaced by an unknown, untested 18-year-old, 104-kilogram wrecking ball named Corey Oates.
Most of Oates’ junior football has been played in the back-row, but the modern game trades in size, power and speed as its currency.
For this reason his coach has seen fit to play the untested rookie out of position on the wing ahead of a tried and trusted (if slightly out of form and favour) ‘semi’ veteran.
This is reflective of emerging trends in the game.
It’s hard to see there being a place in the game for someone with the frame of Paul Hauff or Daryl Halligan.
Even Marshall’s ‘not-so-long-retired’ former team-mates Brett Hodgson and Preston Campbell would likely struggle to make the grade given the shift in emphasis towards bulk.
The modern-day NRL player has become largely a homogenous and adaptable commodity, capable of playing almost any position on the park.
Newcastle’s Kurt Gidley is the most obvious example of that but there are others, such as the Dragons’ Chase Stanley, who also offer this unique adaptability.
Front-row aside, these players are essentially capable of playing any position on the football field, which would have been unthinkable and unachievable for any athlete 20 years ago.
The advent of sports-science and nutrition, complex training methodologies and weights programmes mean there is a much smaller difference between a side’s smallest and biggest player. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule.
Nathan Merritt was selected on the wing for NSW in Game 2 – chalk one up for the small guys.
Merritt’s physical inadequacies were, however, glaringly exposed in the cauldron that is State of Origin though and it’s unlikely we will see a player of similar build in a Blues jersey again.
Not since Tony Trim, the pudgy fruiterer who paid big money to play for NSW in the legends of State of Origin match at Parramatta Stadium several years ago, has a Blues winger looked more like a fish out of water.
This is less a slight on Merritt himself and a more an illustration of the evolution of the modern-day footballer and the rapidly declining place in the game for the small or ‘physically compromised’ body-type.
Marshall has been plagued by inconsistency for several years now – largely related to the long absences on the sideline he’s been forced to endure through serious injury.
It is a credit to Marshall he has been able to have such longevity in the game but there’s no doubt his impact has been progressively diminishing since the 2005 grand final.
Die-hard fans will argue that Marshall was front and centre when New Zealand lifted the World Cup and Four Nations titles in the past five years.
This is inescapably true and Marshall was one of the key components in both victories.
It remains to be seen, however, whether Marshall’s presence alone in either match was the difference between winning and losing.
After all, New Zealand’s tournament-winning drought was broken two years before in the Tri Nations final where the halves combination of Stacey Jones and Nigel Vagana steered the Kiwis to an upset 24-0 victory over the Kangaroos.
On the other hand, Shaun Johnson, while no Adrian Peterson or Calvin Johnson, exemplifies all of the attributes of a modern-day footballer, albeit only five years removed from his child-hood hero Marshall.
That is how quickly our great game and athlete capability in general is evolving.
Johnson possesses enough speed to strip off a fresh layer of paint and that foot-speed allows him to consistently peel off huge kick-metres and frequent 40/20s.
Despite sharing much of the kicking duties with halves-partner Thomas Leuluai, Johnson ranks fourth in the NRL for total kick-metres, ahead of other ‘dominant’ halves in the NRL such as Cooper Cronk, Adam Reynolds and Daly Cherry-Evans, who monopolise the kicking duties for their side.
Johnson’s ability to regularly rake off an extra 10 or 20 metres from long-range kicks is an under-rated and much-improved aspect of his game.
With his defence ever-improving, all signs point toward Johnson surpassing the levels Marshall attained during the peak of his powers.
In all key performance indicator fields for the 2013 season– missed tackles, try-assists, line-breaks, kick-metres.
You name it, Johnson is well ahead of his more storied Kiwi’s team-mate, a sure indicator that Johnson is well on the way to becoming the game’s number one attacking half.
There will never be ‘another Benji Marshall’ but in Shaun Johnson the future looks bright.
We hope the baton-transition is as smooth as it promises to be. Farewell to you, Benji and, to borrow a phrase from over-zealous Kiwi pundit, “Let’s gone Shauny!”.
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