Just days after unsubstantiated reports linked 37-year-old veteran cross-code athlete Israel Folau to a potential National Rugby League (NRL) comeback with the Wests Tigers, head coach Benji Marshall has categorically ruled out any move to bring Folau to the club. The blunt rejection comes as Marshall prioritizes pulling his side out of a low point following a humiliating 68-0 defeat to premiership favorites Penrith last weekend.
Folau, who last played an NRL match back in 2010, has built a nomadic career across multiple football codes since leaving the competition, with stints in Australian Rules Football, international rugby union, and most recently a season with the Super League’s Catalans Dragons. Marshall and Folau actually shared the field once before, lining up together for the NRL All Stars exhibition side in 2010, but that connection has not sparked any interest in a signing from the current Tigers head coach.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Marshall shut down all speculation immediately: “No, we’re not signing him. I don’t talk about recruitment publicly, but that’s the furthest thing from my mind right now. I’ve seen there have been a lot of reports out there, but I need to get my team back on track. I need to focus on what’s important right now, and that’s us getting the performance we need this weekend, so I’m not even going to go down that path.”
Marshall’s full attention is fixed on damage control after the Tigers’ lopsided loss to Penrith, a defeat he described as being fueled by embarrassing “schoolboy errors” that left the entire squad ashamed of their on-field performance. Rather than brushing the defeat under the rug, Marshall said the club has worked through a full review of the match to encourage individual and collective accountability. “It was really important for us to go through that process so we didn’t just flush it under the carpet and pretend it never happened. And although it was tough, I think the value we’ll get out of that will hold us in good stead,” he explained.
Despite the demoralizing loss, Marshall pushed back against outside narratives that the Tigers’ entire season is a write-off, noting that the club holds a 6-6 win-loss record halfway through the campaign. “It’s not all doom and gloom as it feels like it is externally,” Marshall said. His top priority right now is lifting the team’s mentality ahead of their upcoming clash against the Titans on Sunday, which will mark the club’s final match at the historic Leichhardt Oval before the venue closes for a major multi-year renovation that will keep the Tigers away through 2027.
The Tigers will enter the match shorthanded, already missing key starting players Api Koroisau and Adam Doueihi. Much of the external criticism for the club’s recent uneven form has fallen on five-eighth Jarome Luai, who has come under intense scrutiny since announcing he will leave the Tigers to join the PNG Chiefs in 2028. Marshall defended Luai, rejecting the suggestion that his upcoming departure has become a disruptive distraction and pushing back on attempts to pin the team’s poor results solely on Luai.
“I said this at the time (when he signed the deal) that it’ll become a distraction if you let it. If you don’t find the results, then they’ll find the excuses to make that a distraction. And we haven’t had the results, so people are always going to point to that, but it’s deeper than that,” Marshall said. “You don’t like making excuses, but we have a lot of our key players out, and what we haven’t done is adapt enough in those games to defend better. You can talk all you want about Jarome’s decision to go to PNG, but there are 16 other players or 18 other players in the squad that need to do their job as well.”