Benji puts an end to past comparisons and draws a line in the sand, saying, “We’re on the now train.”
After a thrilling upset victory against the Eels, Benji Marshall says his team is on the “now train” and doesn’t care for comparisons to previous Wests Tigers sides.
The Tigers’ stunning 17-16 triumph on Sunday night was made possible by their defense, which displayed a tenacity and drive not seen in years at the team.
When asked if the Tigers would have prevailed in the identical game the previous season, Marshall didn’t hold back.
Marshall retorted, “I don’t care about last year; this is now.”
People tend to forget that we have a whole different roster with a lot of different players we’ve brought in, a lot of young, and our leaders are doing a wonderful job. Last year is last year, it doesn’t matter.
These players had a whole pre-season of it, and I witnessed it. “We practiced the standards we want to accept and the price we have to pay to get there. If you’re not prepared to pay the price you won’t live up to it.”
“There’s still a lot of improvement in us, so we don’t care about what happened last year or the year before; we’re on the now train and moving forward we need to be better than what we were today for where we want to go.”
Marshall commended his team’s perseverance after they successfully defended set after set while half Lachlan Galvin, 18, was in the sin bin.
“Our team’s fight to stay in the game, even after losing Lachy for 10 minutes, was truly impressive,” Marshall remarked.
They played a lot of ball in our half, so the boys deserve credit for holding them out like that. We’ve arguably seen the most resilient performance in a Tigers uniform in a very long time.
We’ve been on the receiving end of that quite a few times, so I think our fans deserve a big celebration tonight.
“We must savor the victories when they occur.”
After being sin-binned, Galvin set up the first try and recovered to set up the winning score late in the second half.
“We play the game for that little moment the kid produced with Jahream when he came back on,” Marshall remarked.
“He just shows his character by coming back on after feeling a little down about himself and producing what he did. We just love the way he plays and the way he is.”
“It’s hard to explain how Lachy is; he’s so quiet but he’s just a footy player, a raw footy player, and you just let him do what he does and he has some great mentors around him to let him do that,” continued Tigers captain Api Koroisau. But in the end, he was truly outstanding.
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