By now, almost everybody has seen the video.
Of Benji Marshall, the once freestyled, flick-passing five-eighth, now entering his third year as head coach of the Wests Tigers and laying down the law.
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“We’re big on standards and if you don’t make your f***ing times consistently and you can’t perform and you’re not professional, you’ll be out of here,” Marshall warned.
Is that right?
“It’s happened,” Marshall continued, “trust me”.
“We’ve been through this s***. We’re not doing that anymore.
“At the Wests Tigers we f***ing now stand for something and if you’re not prepared to follow what we stand for, guess what.”
At which point, Marshall motioned towards the door. Message sent. Message received?
At that stage, he had no idea. It was early in the pre-season and would be at least a few months before his players were actually on the field playing for competition points.
And externally, even if there were some fans who were hanging on to every single of his words, for others they were just that: words.
False hope. Broken promises.
It wasn’t something that was lost on Marshall though. He knew he had to change. He knew this team needed to change. But he also knew none of it would matter unless the results did too.
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Tigers head coach Benji Marshall has set the standards. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
“Every year you’ve got to reflect on what went good in the season, what didn’t go good, what the players need from me as the coach,” he said last week.
“You’ve got to adapt and adjust.
“One of the things with me is because I’m so fresh in the job you’re constant learning. If you stay the same and you don’t change the things you need to change, you’re going to get the same result.
“Without making it about me, I didn’t just change what I did, I changed the way the group did things as well. You’re about to see what happens in the weekend if it’s working or not.”
Granted, it is just one game. But based on what they produced on the weekend, it looks to be working.
The 44-16 win against the Cowboys was their first in their opening match of a season since 2020, and it was their biggest first-up victory ever.
Now, the Tigers have a chance to start a season 2-0 for the first time since 2019 and if there was one thing that was more impressive than the win over North Queensland, it was their response.
When interviewed by Fox League’s Lara Pitt immediately after the game, Jarome Luai’s mind immediately went to the right side of the iconic scoreboard on Wayne Pearce Hill and those 16 points down the bottom.
There were just two at halftime, and even then Luai said in his halftime interview that the defence hadn’t been good enough. So, after letting in three tries in the second half?
“We’ll work on it throughout the year”, Luai said.
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Luai runs clinic as Tigers belt Cowboys | 02:51
It isn’t just Luai either. It seems like this mindset, one of taking every week at a time and not buying into the external hype that will inevitably come with every win, has taken hold of the entire playing group.
Take skipper Apisai Koroisau, who told reporters on Tuesday that they did “plenty wrong” on Saturday and “let ourselves down with back-to-back errors” that let the Cowboys gain momentum and threaten a late comeback.
The sort of clichéd answer you would expect from an experienced player like Koroisau who has come from one of the most professional organisations in the league at Penrith.
But what about Alex Seyfarth, who is now entering his seventh year with the Tigers and was there for all three of the consecutive wooden spoons?
He admitted the win on the weekend was “promising and a good sign”.
“But we’ll put that two points aside and really work on this week and focus on Souths,” he immediately followed that up with.
“That game has been and gone.”
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The Tigers have most past the win. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
To say something is cliché is to say it is so overused to the extent that it has lost all meaning. But these words, as clichéd as they may seem, carry a lot of weight and gravity for a team and, more than anything else, a coach who understands that as much as they can call themselves a “new team” and refuse to talk about the past, the Tigers will continue to be judged by that until they prove that the past is just that.
So, that started with changing the way they handled winning. Seyfarth told reporters on Tuesday “you probably could say in the past we’ve pat ourselves in the back room”.
And now? “We’ve forgotten about it, we’re working hard for next week,” he said.
For Marshall, it started with a pre-season which included reinventing himself in some ways as a coach, both sharpening his focus and communication when it came to training standards while also staying true to the style that saw him come under scrutiny in the first place.
Bulldogs supremo Phil Gould was strong in his defence of Marshall at the time when he was questioned for admitting he is not a traditional “24/7” coach, labelling the criticism “rubbish”.
And speaking on Wide World of Sports’ Six Tackles With Gus podcast this month, Gould said the latest evolution in Marshall as a coach is a matter of “drawing a line in the sand” not just for the players but “for himself”.
Tigers coach Benji Marshall. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
“I would say that every year Benji has coached, he’s gone home and reviewed how he’s done things, his relationship with players, how they train, how they are coached and how they perform,” Gould said.
“I think Benji has realised ‘you know what, they need me to be firmer and hold them more accountable, I need to be a coach, I can’t just be another player’. That sounds to me like Benji drawing a line in the sand for himself — not the players, for himself.
“Maybe that’s a little bit over the top, but at least now he’s said it’s about accountability, effort areas, training and not cutting corners.
“He was a player that relied on natural ability, great skill and personal confidence to get things done and he’s got players like that in his team… but as a unit, the teams who are most successful play by certain principles and structures.
“Benji can’t be Benji the player to his players — he’s got to be Benji the coach.”
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Marshall impressed by Tigers start | 07:51
It is a process that Fox League analyst and current Dragons assistant coach Michael Ennis has learned throughout his transition from playing to the coach’s box, where he has also spent time at Canberra, Parramatta and Manly.
Dragons hooker Damien Cook described Ennis’ footy IQ as “unbelievable” in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald ahead of the season, and while Ennis has been able to lean on his strengths as a player in his coaching career he admitted finding his voice as a coach has “definitely” been a “different” challenge.
“When you’ve been involved in the game for a long time and played, you’ve got to trust and rely on your instincts and I think that naturally comes out in your voice but then as a coach I think it’s definitely different,” Ennis told foxsports.com.au.
“There are times when you need to say things that are important and there are other times that you just need to sit back and trust the players and trust the work that they’ve done and allow them to drive what you’ve implemented or what you’ve spoke to them about.
“It’s just about getting that balance right.”
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For Marshall at the Tigers, it seems like he has got that balance exactly right and a lot of that comes back to having the right group of players at his disposal.
After all, it is easy to forget this is a very different roster to the one Marshall inherited when he first started as assistant coach in 2022 and then took over from Tim Sheens in late 2023.
Jackson Hastings was the biggest of the 11 names to depart in 2023, while that season saw the arrival of one of Marshall’s now key figures in upholding his standards: Api Koroisau.
David Klemmer, Isaiah Papali’i and John Bateman were among some of the other high-profile players to arrive at the club in 2023, but they all were quick to move on.
Then, after more than a decade, Luke Brooks departed in 2024 along with another long-time Tiger in David Nofoaluma while Latu and Samuela Fainu walked through the doors, emerging as two key pieces in the rebuild under Marshall.
Fast-forward to last season and Marshall brought in two more premiership winners from Penrith to help drive standards in Jarome Luai and Sunia Turuva, while Terrell May also joined the club from the Roosters.
There were still challenges and tough calls to be made. Jake Simpkin and Tommy Talau, young players who had debuted at the Tigers and were once seen as the future of the club, left for Manly before the start of 2025.
Papali’i, one of their marquee recruits from just a few years prior, departed too for Penrith, while former CEO Shane Richardson famously declared “we want people that are in for the fight” in the wake of Stefano Utoikamanu’s exit.
That was just the start of the drama for Marshall, who then had to deal with the Lachlan Galvin saga and Tallyn Da Silva’s early exit.
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Lachlan Galvin and Jarome Luai. NRL PHOTOSSource: The Daily Telegraph
By the end of it all, just five players remained at the club through the duration of Marshall’s coaching career since first starting as assistant coach in 2022: Adam Doueihi, Alex Twal, Alex Seyfarth, Fonua Pole and Starford To’a.
But they, along with the fresh faces in the team, have seemingly bought into the new vision that Marshall has for the club: one that blends the high-wire act with hard work.
“There’s probably just been that perception of the Tigers over a long period of time that they’ve been a really dangerous attacking side and we all know that if you look at the best sides that have consistently been in the top four and won competitions that they’ve built their attacks throughout the season but their cornerstone and their backbone has always been their defence,” Ennis said.
“No doubt that’s an area that and a perception that Benji would be driving there and he’s got some guys that have come out of great systems that really value that part of the game but then at the same time they don’t want to lose that identity which the Tigers have always been a good attacking side to watch and moves the ball well.
“40 points in their first week just proves that, but it’s just about getting that balance right.”
Leichhardt Oval was rocking. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
Which is why as impressive as Saturday’s win against the Cowboys may have been, Luai was quick to set the tone by stressing that even if it was good it wasn’t good enough. Maybe for the Tigers of old, but this new version of the Tigers under Marshall is different.
Again, that may just sound like words and these too may just be words, but consider what Koroisau told reporters on Tuesday, mirroring the same message he had in the club’s post-game press conference.
“I feel like we have a new team, a new mentality,” he said.
“This year is all about consistency. We’ve held our standards in pre-season and those standards need to carry over into the season.”
All because Marshall “drew a line in the sand” as Seyfarth put it, making it clear what the Wests Tigers as a club were going to accept and what they were not going to accept.
“And being fit was one of them,” Seyfarth said.
So, when the Cowboys scored in the 60th minute and reduced the deficit to just three converted tries, instead of letting up these new Tigers put the foot down and scored two more in seven minutes.
Message sent. Message received.
“It’s just a reality check really,” Royce Hunt said of Marshall’s pre-season address.
“If you don’t want to be here, then you don’t have to be here. We’re not in a position where we have the luxury of coasting through a pre-season, so for us standards are massive.”
Royce Hunt of the Tigers. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
Reading all of this, it probably only further highlights how strange it is for a premiership-winning coach in Michael Maguire to be the subject of so much criticism despite seemingly trying to instil the same standards of consistency at Brisbane.
Wherever the truth may lie at Red Hill, ultimately results speak volumes and it is something Marshall has quickly learned in his coaching career. Although with the current situation at the Broncos, he’s also learned that can only save you for so long.
“The criticism is going to come no matter what,” he said last week.
“I look at a guy like Madge who just won a grand final, he’s copping it left, right and centre, he just won the competition. I actually can’t believe it.”
But if there is one lesson that Marshall has carried from his playing days into his coaching career, it is that any successful team he has been in, it is the “standards and accountability of the group and the way that your leaders drive the group that is the most important thing”.
In other words, Marshall himself as a coach can only do so much. Even if he was the 24/7 coach that some people wanted to force him to be, that alone necessarily won’t be enough.
He also needs the players. He needs a captain like Koroisau, and he needs an evolving leader like Luai.
Luai has evolved as a leader. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
The 29-year-old told foxsports.com.au in the pre-season that 2025 was a “massive learning” experience for him on the leadership front. The biggest lesson being that there is “no right or wrong way to be”.
“It’s just the fact that everyone’s different and everyone wants to be treated differently and reacts to different things in different ways,” he added.
There were plenty of ways Luai was challenged in his first year at the club too. From Galvin’s mid-season exit to stepping into the halfback jumper and alongside a number of different halves partners.
Now, after what Luai himself admitted was “one of the toughest” pre-seasons he has ever had, he is back in the five-eighth jumper where he feels most comfortable and in many ways he, both as a player and personality, is an extension of Marshall.
He has the flick passes and rock star personality. But he also knows from those four-straight premierships he won at Penrith that staying at the top of the mountain requires a lot of work.
“You listen to Jarome and as jovial and as fun as he is, he certainly appreciates the hard work side of things and knows how important the physical part of his preparation is both at club level and when he’s played representative football,” Ennis said.
“When you get really elite senior leaders it certainly allows you as a coach to just have great trust that you know what’s important to the footy team that they’re driving on the field and keeping guys accountable.”
The Tigers are setting standards at training. Picture: Justin LloydSource: News Corp Australia
It was the case in 2023 when Luai was captured on camera having a serious discussion with then teammate Jaeman Salmon after he was caught out of position, with the Panthers losing that season-opener 13-12. They went on to lose just five more games that year.
Luai told The Sydney Morning Herald after winning his fourth and final premiership with the club that he liked the added responsibility.
“I had to mature,” he added.
“I think everyone does. Everyone has their time. I think mine was a bit later than others.”
But maybe, with the position both he and the Tigers found themselves in at that point, that maturation as a leader happened at the exact right time.
Marshall too, seems to have matured as a coach and leader with time. It was never going to come naturally. He was constantly learning, constant evolving and now he has a roster that he has built.
Slowly but surely, he is building a new identity too: both for himself and this team.
Can the Tigers continue their strong start to 2026? Catch their game against the Rabbitohs on Saturday night at 7.35pm AEDT LIVE and EXCLUSIVE with no ad-breaks during play on FOX LEAGUE, available on Kayo Sports. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.