1 day Ago By Martin Gabor
Wests Tigers coach Benji Marshall is adamant his players didn’t cross the line and haven’t bullied Lachlan Galvin following his decision to knock back a monster contract extension. The players association became involved after social media posts from players including co-captain Jarome Luai in the wake of Galvin’s decision which Marshall labelled an “emotional response”. Almost 20 journalists were on hand for the club’s media opportunity where Marshall and co-captains Luai and Api Koroisau spoke in the wake of a full week of attention on Galvin’s shock decision.
Luai posted on Instagram with a caption “team first”, while teammate Sunia Turuva has a photo of Galvin’s locker with “here comes the money” playing in the background. The intense scrutiny on the teenager forced the RLPA to become involved, but Marshall defended his players for having an emotional reaction to losing the club’s best youngster. “I don’t think he’s been bullied by the other players,” he said.
“Emotional responses to things happening might seem like it, but there’s been no sense of bullying at our club, and we don’t stand for bullying. “I talked about it with the team this morning, and that’s not us. We’re not bullies, our players are not bullies.
“They had an emotional reaction to one of their teammates, but it’s not bullying. I can guarantee that.” Luai is a passionate supporter of Marshall and explained why he decided to post what he did earlier in the week.
“I was just throwing support behind the coach and what we stand for a club,” he said. “Moving forward, if anything happens like this, we’re working hard to have team first behaviours and making sure that’s built for the bottom up.” Turuva’s post has earned the most criticism, with plenty of people of the belief that it’s unfair to target a teenage teammate who wants to develop his talents elsewhere.
The whole situation has been messy, and Marshall concedes his star winger got it wrong. “I don’t think it was something that we wanted, to be honest,” he said. “Crossing the line? I don’t know.
I think it was an emotional response to something as a teammate. “Unless you’ve played in team sports, you won’t get it and understand what that means. “I don’t think he should have done it.
Am I going to slap him on the wrists? No. We’ll deal with it internally because we don’t need that.” Galvin won’t play on Easter Monday, with the five-eighth to feature in the NSW Cup at Lidcombe Oval instead after he was dropped by Marshall on Tuesday.
He trained with the second group at the main session on Thursday, with Koroisau revealing “I don’t think I’ve seen much of it” when asked if the senior players had spoken to the young playmaker. “Not since all of this has come out,” Luai said in response to the same question. “It’s been a bit messy, but things happen and I think we’ve done a really good job on focusing on what we need to do this weekend.
“He’s got people around him, and I think it’s best that he needs to know what he needs to do moving forward, and we need to know what we need to do.”.
