Benji Marshall says he was not going to retire when he retired. Instead, he says he had verbally agreed to join the Gold Coast Titans for two more years before a conversation with Wayne Bennett before the 2021 NRL Grand final changed everything.
Marshall said Bennett sat him down and asked: “What a way to go out on a grand final. What else have you got to prove in the game?” Marshall’s answer, he said, came quickly. “He’s right,” he said, and the retired playmaker added that the talk pushed him to walk away from the NRL after the grand final instead of taking the Titans deal.
The weight of that decision was not just about football. Marshall said he did not want to keep moving his family, explaining that he had young kids and that shifting them away from his other family would have been hard. “So I actually made the decision for other people,” he said. He also said he did not tell anyone about the choice until after the game was over.
Marshall’s reflection lands with extra force because his playing career already sat among the most decorated of his generation. He won the 2005 Grand Final with the Tigers, later played for the Dragons, Broncos and Rabbitohs, and captained the Kiwis 21 times across a 15-season Test career. He was part of the New Zealand side that won the 2008 Rugby League World Cup, before later being honoured in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022 for services to rugby league and inducted into the NRL Hall of Fame in 2024.
That history makes his second thoughts understandable. Marshall said he now looks back and wonders whether he should have kept going. “But looking back now, I sort of wish I kept playing. I still jump into sessions now and think ‘I could still do this,’” he said. It is a rare admission from a player whose retirement was framed as a clean ending, but who says the real reason was a mix of family and timing rather than a feeling that his rugby league was done.
The broader story is that Marshall’s move into coaching came from a turning point, not a long farewell tour. He is now the coach of Wests Tigers, who sat 10th on the NRL ladder after 10 games, and he remains one of two New Zealand coaches in the competition alongside Manly’s Kieran Foran. The transition has put Marshall in a different seat in the game, but his own account shows the switch was shaped by the same instinct that guided his playing career: a decision made quickly, and one he says he made for the people around him.
