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Mark down round 10 as the point where coaches got desperate this season.
When I saw that Marshall had been replaced by Fulton at five-eighth for Wests Tigers against South Sydney on Friday night, I thought the Tigers must have invested in a time machine and brought Bob Fulton back at his best.
But Liam Fulton at five-eighth? Is Benji Marshall really going that bad? And even if he is, does it make sense to demote him to the bench in the hope that it shocks him back into form?
It’s hard to know exactly how it has evolved to this point without Tigers coach Mick Potter providing the full details.
For all we know, Marshall may have been told he was on his last chance before last Friday’s game against Cronulla.
But I don’t see how putting Marshall on the bench could be the answer to the problem. I reckon you either bank on him coming good, and work even harder with him to try to make that happen, or go the whole hog and drop him to the NSW Cup.
Dropping him to the bench seems to me to be a half-measure that doesn’t really serve much purpose.
Marshall will presumably come off the bench at some stage of the first half and simply try to do the same thing he would normally try to do from the start. Only he’ll be starting cold.
Whether the embarrassment of being benched has a positive effect on Marshall remains to be seen, but I think it’s a confidence thing more than anything with him at the moment.
Things haven’t been going well for him or the team, so he’s lacking in it – probably for the first time in his career.
The statistics show that Marshall just isn’t running the ball.
His totals for metres made in his last two games, the 40-4 loss to Canterbury and the 30-6 loss to the Sharks, were 28 metres and 28 metres again – his two lowest totals of the season.
He hasn’t made a line-break in his last four games.
Marshall had a toe injury earlier in the season that would have significantly restricted his training as well as forcing him to miss two games, and there are suggestions he has been carrying a bit of extra weight since he returned.
If he is, he’s not going to lose it sitting on the bench.
Potter wasn’t the only coach to cause a stir when the teams were announced last night. Newcastle coach Wayne Bennett dropped two stars – Timana Tahu and Chris Houston – from the team to play Canterbury at Hunter Stadium on Sunday.
The Knights were woeful against Canberra last Sunday, scoring the first 14 points of that match but then not scoring again and conceding 44.
Bennett is under enormous pressure to get the Knights into the finals this season. They are hanging in there in fifth place at this stage, but the jury is still out on whether they are a genuine top-eight team.
After missing the finals with the Knights last season, it would be a huge shock if Bennett wasn’t there in September for two years in a row.
But, then again, this time last year Tim Sheens and Brian Smith were coaching Wests Tigers and Sydney Roosters respectively, with contracts that extended into this season.
Both were gone at the end of last season. It’s that sort of game.
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