Benji Marshall impressed the man he will replace in 2025 as coach of Wests Tigers at the club’s first day of training.
Tim Sheens, 72, back at the club after guiding the joint venture to its only premiership in 2005, said of the 37-year-old Marshall: “Benji is doing a great job.”
“He jumped into training with them on the first day. One of the big boys was struggling on the 2.5km run and Benji ran with him.”
If Marshall has impressed at Wests Tigers, he has also saved the Australian NRL clubs from a major embarrassment. When Steve Kearney announced last month he was retiring as an assistant coach at the Storm, only Benji’s appointment as an assistant at Concord saved 17 NRL clubs from not having a Polynesian coach in a code where 52 per cent of the playing population have Pasifika heritage.
Kearney, 50, was head coach at two NRL clubs – Parramatta and the New Zealand Warriors – and assistant at Brisbane and Melbourne after a celebrated playing career.
That’s 30 continuous years of every winter weekend devoted to rugby league. Who can deny him retirement, especially with his wife and two daughters based in Brisbane for the past six years while he was with the Storm and Warriors?
The dearth of Polynesian mentors is also evident at the World Cup in England. The Cook Islands’ Tony Iro and the Kiwis’ Stacey Jones – both assistants at the Warriors – and Samoa’s Frank Pritchard are the only Polynesian coaches at the tournament, despite players from Pacific Island heritage heavily represented.
Benji Marshall will take over as Wests Tigers head coach in 2025.Credit:Getty
Ask Kearney for a reason for the disproportionately low number of Pasifika coaches and he struggles for an answer, while offering a part-solution.
“It’s a vocation that hasn’t been encouraged,” he says. “There’s been no NRL assistance to help the process.
“Maori, Pacific Island and Indigenous players comprise well over half the playing population but haven’t been encouraged to become assistant coaches
“We need a pathway or a program to encourage players when they retire.”
Former Warriors coach Stephen Kearney.Credit:Getty
Asked if it would help if the salary of a Polynesian assistant at an NRL club was exempt from the football department soft cap, Kearney said, “It’s still a spend for the club but if the NRL provided the funds for the hire, it would be a benefit.”
A similar incentive operates for Indigenous coaches via the Kari organisation, which part-funds the salary of First Nations staff at sporting clubs. An assistant at Wests Tigers last season, Ronald Griffiths, is now the coach of the Newcastle Knights NRLW team.
The NFL also has a problem with a low representation of black coaches, despite 58 per cent of the playing population being of black heritage. The Rooney Rule, named after a former owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, was introduced in 2003 to encourage the hiring of minorities. Each NRL club was required to interview at least two black or Hispanic candidates for the positions of head coach and general manager. There were three black coaches in the NFL in 2003 and there are still three today. While the interviews were mandatory, they were mostly a sham.
Opportunities are limited because the NFL, like the NRL, recycles coaches. Some of the NRL’s assistant coaches are former head coaches, even at their fourth club, meaning they reduce the vacancies for Pasifika assistants.
Craig Bellamy, who twice hired Kearney as an assistant, can’t explain why the NRL has a poor representation of Polynesian coaches, except to say he wouldn’t hire a coach just because he was Polynesian, nor would he not hire one for the same reason.
Kearney agrees Bellamy is colour blind, saying, “If a person fits the job description, he gets it in Melbourne.”
Sheens is the same. “I don’t see colour of skin,” he says. “I see only ability.”
Mal Meninga is of South Sea Island heritage and is in charge of the Australian team at the World Cup.
While it’s not the NRL, the Kangaroos are the biggest brand in the code, meaning an Immortal of Polynesian ancestry can reach the top as a coach.
As a player, Benji has already paved the way for Polynesians to be playmakers.
“I’m only an interim coach,” said Sheens, who will step aside after 40 years in the job, confident Marshall can be a field marshall off the field as well.
“He will be front of office.”
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