Former rugby league star Benji Marshall admitted Tuesday that he made only an "average" union player but insisted he had no regrets about his brief foray into the 15-man code.
Marshall split from the Auckland Blues Super 15 side on Monday after barely two months playing union, with the 29-year-old conceding his move from league had been a failure.
"My lack of the technical aspects of rugby union was what was letting me down and I felt like I was playing rugby league on a rugby field with 14 other rugby players,'' he told Fairfax Media.
"But I definitely don't regret it because I have got everything I wanted to get out of it except the performance on the field -- which just hasn't worked out the way I wanted it to -- and I am just an average rugby player."
Marshall, who guided Wests Tigers to a National Rugby League (NRL) title in 2005, announced his switch to union in a blaze of publicity late last year, saying he wanted to make the All Blacks national team.
But the New Zealand-born playmaker never looked comfortable and played only 212 minutes of the first eight games of the season.
A return to Australia's NRL appears his most likely option, although the only New Zealand-based team in the competition, the Auckland Warriors, said on Tuesday they were not interested in signing him.
Marshall pledged when he left Wests that he would never play against them in the NRL, although his manager Martin Tauber played down the commitment following the split with the Blues.
"That comment he made was probably made at the wrong time. It won't exist," Tauber told Sydney's Daily Telegraph, which reported that the Tigers had ruled out taking Marshall back.
Source: AFP
