{"id":37708,"date":"2021-02-23T00:14:32","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T01:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=37708"},"modified":"2021-02-23T07:01:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T07:01:23","slug":"benji-reveals-why-he-sprayed-new-teammate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=37708","title":{"rendered":"Benji reveals why he sprayed new teammate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NRL veteran Benji Marshall has explained why he had to give new teammate Damien Cook a spray at training last week.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;He&#x27;s a dribbler, Cooky,&quot; Marshall said with a laugh.<\/p>\n<p><img data-video-id=\"6233909048001\" src=\"https:\/\/vms-network-images-prod.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com\/2021\/02\/343964\/pickerImage.jpg\" alt=\"Johnathan Thurston previews the 2021 NRL Season\" data-vms-id=\"ref:ckld93x0b006j0gp8txkt2tow\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&quot;The connections that you have, you have to work on at training &#8211; and Cooky gives me so much stick during the week, I needed him to know that his passes were shit,&quot; he told <em>Fox Sports News<\/em> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Few players in the NRL have a higher pedigree than the Blues and Kangaroos hooker, but Marshall said in order to succeed, nobody can be above criticism.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Part of being in a team is people have just got to take it the right way. It&#x27;s not about putting people on show and that, it&#x27;s just an expectation that you have for each other.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;And you know what? I got a reaction. Because he was out there practicing his passing at the end of training.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Marshall said that things like that were beneficial to young players in the squad, if even a player of the calibre of Cook was putting in extras after training.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wwos.nine.com.au\/nrl\/wests-tigers-benji-marshall-club-to-move-on-beloved-legend-against-wishes\/4524356b-1ef8-4c66-b03f-8123f3e7003e\" target=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"The 35-year-old former Tiger\">The 35-year-old former Tiger<\/a> provides some valuable experience for the Bunnies, who will be looking 2021 as a premiership or bust year.<\/p>\n<p>If Marshall were to win the competition this year, he would break former teammate Lote Tuqiri&#x27;s record as the player with the most years between grand final victories.<\/p>\n<p>Tuqiri won with the Broncos in 2000, and then in 2014 with the Bunnies.<\/p>\n<p><img data-video-id=\"6234227007001\" src=\"https:\/\/vms-network-images-prod.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com\/2021\/02\/344282\/SPLUT2.jpg\" alt=\"Trbojevic filmed in Manly foot-race\" data-vms-id=\"ref:cklg1v79100010io7q63urw0k\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Marshall revealed that it wasn&#x27;t long after his 2005 triumph with the Wests Tigers that he thought he&#x27;d never play again.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;If you asked me when I was 23 after five shoulder re-constructions, I was probably looking like not even playing 100 games,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Now he&#x27;s in season 19 with more than 300 first grade appearances under his belt.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I&#x27;m pretty proud I get this opportunity again,&quot; he said, noting that he still has the fire to compete and improve.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;When you turn up to training in the NRL, if you can&#x27;t go every day trying to learn something new, or once you&#x27;ve think you&#x27;ve figured it out or mastered it, that&#x27;s when you&#x27;ve got a bit of dramas.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I&#x27;m just a sponge that loves taking in information. When I play, I like to offer everything I can or what I know.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wwos.nine.com.au\/nrl\/nrl-all-stars-indigenous-maori-benji-marshall-new-zealand-game\/3106a208-f851-4da5-8e30-6fff7f318fa5\" target=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Marshall said he felt &#x27;pretty good&#x27; after the All Stars game\">Marshall said he felt &#x27;pretty good&#x27; after the All Stars game<\/a> as his competitiveness took over and he stayed on the field for well beyond the 40 minutes he was supposed to play.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I don&#x27;t have anything to prove, I just wanted to win. Representing our people and our culture it was something special for me, and playing with my brother for the first time was pretty exciting.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>With Cody Walker likely to miss games with State of Origin duty and several Rabbitohs forwards capable of playing 80 minutes, Marshall looks a lock for the 14 jumper at his new club, where Wayne Bennett will obviously have faith in him to start when needed.<\/p>\n<p>Marshall said he was grateful to still have a career at his 36th birthday &#8211; which he celebrates in a few days.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;There wasn&#x27;t going to be a [career at my] 29th at one stage &#8211; you just don&#x27;t know. As I do get older, everyone seems to start telling me I should stop playing, but I don&#x27;t care what people say.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;At the end of the day if you feel like mentally you&#x27;ve still got it and physically you can still offer a lot of things, then go for it. I&#x27;m still here chasing my dreams at 36.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/login.nine.com.au\/login?client_id=wwos&amp;redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwwos.nine.com.au&amp;newsletter=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!\"><em><strong>For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>NRL veteran Benji Marshall has explained why he had to give new teammate Damien Cook a spray at training last week. &quot;He&#x27;s a dribbler, Cooky,&quot; <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=37708\" title=\"Benji reveals why he sprayed new teammate\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37708"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37710,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37708\/revisions\/37710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}