‘Waiting to see if Benji can coach’: The ‘elephant in the room’ as pressure mounts on Tigers

The jury is still out on Benji Marshall as an NRL head coach.

That is according to News Corp journalist Dean Ritchie, who revealed on NRL 360 that there’s some Wests Tigers powerbrokers that are “still waiting to see if Benji can coach.”

The Tigers are heading towards their third-straight wooden spoon in Marshall’s first season at the helm. They sit 17th, two points behind the Eels, who they play in the final round.

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Marshall conceded this week that potentially claiming another wooden spoon is “the elephant in the room”, however Ritchie believes there should be more pressure on the rookie coach at the start of next season.

“My elephant in the room is not so much the wooden spoon this year, my elephant in the room is the first six-to-eight rounds next year,” he said.

“Benji’s been there for two years now, he wasn’t head coach last year — albeit most people thought he was pulling the strings.

“In two years they’ve won nine games.

“If they start poorly next year, I’m not suggesting Benji will be sacked, but I am suggesting club management might start to say ‘we need to see some improvement here otherwise changes have to be made’.”

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Fox League’s James Hooper can pick out some positives from this season though — the emergence of Lachlan Galvin and Samuela Fainu — but NRL 360 host Braith Anasta believes that means the expectations for the club should be higher in 2025.

“With those players improving and then Jarome Luai coming to the club, they’d want to see some results early on next year,” Anasta said.

He also asked Ritchie if the “drums might be beating” if there’s not improvement next season.

“I can say this, I know there’s some high people at the Wests Tigers, who are ‘still waiting to see if Benji can coach’,” Ritchie responded.

“Have we seen it yet? I can’t see a lot of improvement. Yes there’s kids coming through, but there’s no category on the competition ladder that says kids coming through. It says W and L — and there’s more L than W.

“I did think the new Benji era, which was thrown at us, might produce something more than what we’re seeing.”

Anasta believes Marshall “deserves a full season” at the helm in 2025 regardless of the results, but added: “There’s no doubt if they struggle again like they did this year he’ll be in trouble.”