Greg Prichard: Benji looks comfortable in NRL's hot seat

Marshall, the former superstar player and now rookie head coach, resisted the opportunity - and he was afforded it multiple times via the line of questioning - to make it about him, even in some small way, and instead made it all about the team.

He wasn't interested in musing about whether the Tigers of last season would've won a game like that against the Eels.

Nor did he care to take the bait and talk about playing in the next round against the Dolphins, where he would take on a great mentor of his in coach Wayne Bennett and a side that included his brother, Jeremy Marshall-King, at hooker.

Marshall made sure it was all about the here and now - the fantastic, 17-16 win over Parramatta after coming from 14-6 down, the magnificent team effort, particularly in defence, and the exciting contribution of 18-year-old five-eighth Lachlan Galvin.

The kid was playing just his third game in first grade and was sin-binned for a hip-drop tackle during the second half.

It would've been curtains for the Tigers had they conceded another try while he was off, but they held firm and after returning Galvin eventually created the try for teammate Jahream Bula that put the Tigers in front.

They had to rely on Clint Gutherson missing a shot at penalty goal in what was the last play of the game, but that's what happened. And the best team on the day won.

Marshall knows how the media works. He had almost 20 years of learning that as a player. He didn't want to feed the chooks an emotion-based story about coaching against his brother and Bennett.

Someone writes a story about it, television discusses it and then Marshall gets asked more questions about it when he does his pre-game media conference. It just becomes a distraction.

This was the key message from Marshall: "We practised the whole pre-season of the standards we want to accept and the price we have to pay to get there, and if you're not prepared to pay the price you won't live up to it and these guys had a whole pre-season of it and I saw it.

"So we don't care about what happened last year or the year before, we're on the now train and moving forward we need to be better than what we were today for where we want to go, so there's still a lot of improvement in us."

He rammed home that point again when asked whether the Tigers would've won a game like that last year.

"I don't care about last year, this is now," he said. "Last year is last year, it doesn't matter, and people forget we have a completely different roster with a lot of different players we've brought in, a lot of youth and our leaders are doing a great job."

It was a good little presser, as we call them, in an era when a lot of those post-match gatherings have become straightforward and boring.

We saw a young coach seize an opportunity to make it clear what he's all about and how he intends to address things going forward.

I find Marshall as a coach impressive in these early days. Hey, the whole world might fall in on him over the next few weeks - rugby league has the capacity to do that - but I think we're dealing with something real here.

Marshall has got the players buying in to how he wants them to play as a team. The clearest indication of that is in defence.

Last season the Tigers were the second-worst defensive team in the NRL, conceding 675 points in 24 games at an average of 28.12 points per game.

After beginning this season with a bye they conceded 32 points in a second-round loss to Canberra, but have since begun reeling things in.

Wins over Cronulla (32-6) and the Eels have seen them concede a total of just 22 points at an average of 11 in those two games.

I know it's only a small sample, but despite their first game against the Raiders not going to plan they are getting that average down from last year. It now stands at 54 points conceded at an average of 18.

And despite having only played three games so far this season they've already registered half as many wins as the four they got in all of last season as wooden spooners.

It's a shame Galvin picked up a two-game suspension for that hip-drop tackle and is out of the game against the Dolphins at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night.

He has become one of my favourite players already. There's something about a teenaged halves player, fresh out of high school and with a heap of ability just waiting to be honed, making his way against the big boys in first grade.

Marshall knows all about that. He was a teenaged sensation, making his first-grade debut for Wests Tigers as an 18-year-old in 2003 before playing a huge part in them winning the premiership two years later, when he was still just 20.

There probably can't be a better choice of a coach to steer Galvin in the right direction than Marshall, because he faced all the challenges that Galvin will face.

Any questions Galvin has, Marshall can surely answer them.

Galvin will be back soon enough and Marshall will no doubt make that time out for the kid valuable by working on a few key things with him. That's what a smart coach does - and Benji appeals as a smart coach.