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When Benji Marshall arrived at Keebra Park State High School as a skinny 15-year-old touch footy player, not even Benji himself could know the rocky, entertaining, road that lay ahead.
Marshall’s flamboyant style instantly made him a hit with fans in season 2003, when he first debuted for the Wests Tigers at Campbelltown Stadium.
On that day the Tigers trounced the visiting Newcastle Knights and it was a scrawny little wiz kid doing all the damage.
He was an overnight superstar.
Some might say success came too early for Marshall and his Tigers, who quickly developed into one of the most dangerous offensive sides in the National Rugby League.
Within two years Wests had won the NRL premiership.
That scrawny wiz kid was now the toast of the town and his entrancing sidestep made him the NRL’s poster boy for a whole new generation of budding rugby league fans.
Then reality set in.
The Tigers would loose halfback Scott Prince to the Gold Coast Titans and fullback Brett Hodgson a few years later.
Now Marshall was stuck with a leadership tag he was seemingly never comfortable with.
It should be noted Marshall is quite possibly one of the most gifted attacking five-eighths rugby league has produced.
But being just one part of an overall package does not make you a legend.
Every great playmaker had to modify their game as they aged.
Modern-day greats like Darren Lockyer, Andrew Johns and Brad Fittler altered their own personal styles without ever losing their grip on whatever side they led.
Their importance never diminished.
Marshall has not been able to evolve.
As time has passed the big play in the clutch moment has gone astray, leaving Tigers fans more and more bemused by the low percentage plays that once made him great.
Don’t forget those shoulder injuries either. Not even Clark Kent could come back from all those setbacks and be the dynamo he once was.
For someone who always struggled with defensive technique, those injuries sealed his fate. He never had a chance.
Nevertheless, Whakatane’s biggest export still found time to win an NRL premiership, a World Cup for New Zealand, the Golden Boot for world’s best player and a media career with the Nine Network.
Perhaps our expectations of Benji were too high.
Maybe we hyped him up so much for so long that we all drank the Kool-Aid.
None of this is Marshall’s fault off course. But when a player leaves us we have to put his legacy up against history and measure them up.
Marshall didn’t underachieve. He overachieved.
As fans, we don’t need to be down on Benji for leaving the game and trying his hand at rugby union. That is the nature of the modern game.
The quicker we realise how much this scrawny touch footballer from Whakatane has achieved, the quicker we can forgive and forget.
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