Papali’i is assured before the new season.

According to Isaiah Papali’i, the Wests Tigers were at their best under Benji Marshall’s leadership last season, and he believes the team will advance in 2024.

Last season, with three games left, the team announced that Marshall would succeed Tim Sheens as head coach at the end of the season—a year earlier than originally scheduled—with the premiership winner essentially taking charge of the team from that point on.

According to Papali’i, the team was playing some of its best football at that point, as evidenced by their 24-23 victory over the Dolphins, which gave them one of their four season victories.

The 25-year-old Kiwi international is confident that the club’s future is brighter because of this alone, as they will enter 2024 having won two wooden spoons in a row.

Papali’i told NRL.com, “I think that’s where we were most consistent—in the back end of our season, with Benji.”

“You just get that feeling where you feel like you are in the game a bit more and the way we were playing was our type of football, even though we weren’t winning [all that time].”

“It will be good to have Benji in charge; he will provide us with a consistent message or game plan that will be easy to follow for the entire 27 rounds.”

Poor on-field results combined with rumors surrounding Sheens’s future as head coach made sure the team was always in the public eye in 2023. Papali’i, who had played in the grand final with the Eels the previous year, acknowledged that this made it occasionally difficult to concentrate.

“Despite your best efforts to ignore it, all outside noise serves as a distraction,” he remarked.

Though it didn’t have a significant effect on me, I believe that many of the boys handled it differently. It’s just something to keep in the back of your mind.

“Time will tell if that continues, but considering how difficult that season was, I’m glad we have the next one to look forward to.”

Papali’i, meanwhile, claimed that the club’s ability to develop a large number of players was the main advantage of the 2023 campaign.

In ’23, players like Fonua Pole and Junior Tupou had successful second seasons in the top grade, and fullback Jahream Bula made a real splash as a rookie by scoring five tries and dishing out seven try assists in 18 games.

We had a very young team playing there. Every week, you don’t realize it at the time, but all those experiences—good or bad—only help you become a better player, Papali’i recalled.

I believe they will reflect on the season, gain insight, and gain assurance from it. They performed admirably, holding their own for a significant portion of that season when we truly needed them every week.

I’m excited to see them have a strong preseason and extract all the good things from that 2023 campaign.