**The Tiger who didn't stray: Marshall will grow old with his long-time love**
GLENN JACKSON
February 26, 2010
Big cats … Tiger-for-life Benji Marshall poses with the real thing at Taronga Zoo yesterday. He says he opted to keep a lid on his decision to re-sign. Photo: Quentin Jones
The deal which has Benji Marshall not only playing for the Tigers for life but also playing with the real animal was sealed deep in Bears territory. In Crows Nest, not much more than a hefty kick from North Sydney Oval, Marshall decided to sign his life to his club.
Three weeks ago he spoke with the club's chief executive, Stephen Humphreys, and chairman, David Trodden, and a four-year contract extension which will see him in a Tigers jumper until the end of 2015 was sealed.
They were at a dinner at his manager's house.
''We just sat down, and Steve talked about how much I meant to the club, and Dave talked about how much I meant to the club,'' Marshall said. ''Just the passion they showed, and the desire they showed to want to have me there made me feel like I was wanted there.
''You know that feeling that you have when you know something's right, that's what I had. At that point I just knew I wanted to be there. Some people can just get to me and make me want to do things, and they were definitely two of them.''
The first talks about his new six-year contract, the longest of any player since Super League, occurred towards the end of last season. Marshall's manager, Martin Tauber, raised it with Trodden, and the pair continued discussions on the Four Nations tour. Yesterday, the deal, in which Marshall will earn more than $2 million over its final four years, was confirmed.
Tauber felt it needed extra promotion, and so it was that Marshall found himself posing before a female Sumatran tiger at Taronga Zoo.
''I knew I wanted to do it but I just didn't think it was going to happen so soon,'' Marshall, who turned 25 yesterday, said of the new contract. ''To have it done so quickly … I know I wanted to stay but it was good enough to be able to agree straight away.''
He said the decision was his own.
''I kept it to myself the whole time,'' the New Zealand captain said. ''My family didn't know about it until last week. It was a decision I felt I had to make on my own. It's for me. It's my future. It's one of the biggest decisions I've had to make.
''To get the opportunity to sign until I'm 30, it's something special. In this day and age, with how the money is, how you can find more money elsewhere, it's a hard thing to do. I could have chased the quick dollar somewhere else, and that was tossed up in the past. But now that my future's secure, in the long run, financially that's going to help me more than it would if I went overseas to play.''
He erased clauses in his contract which enabled him to leave if his coach Tim Sheens, the only man to coach him at NRL level, departed.
''Now I'm at the stage where it's just about me, I worry about myself now,'' he said. ''I've done my part in staying at the club, now it's up to them for Tim to stay. Hopefully it'll happen.''
Marshall said he could improve 40 per cent on even his best form so far. ''The best is still yet to come,'' he said. ''I've still got a long way to go. … I'm a bit smarter now, a bit wiser.''
New Zealand coach Stephen Kearney said the code would benefit from Marshall's decision. ''It's a massive vote of confidence in our game,'' he said. ''The last thing the game would have wanted was to lose another player of his calibre, like we lost Mark Gasnier and Sonny Bill Williams.''
