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Peter-John "PJ" Marsh (born 19 February 1980 in
Gladstone, Queensland Gladstone () is a coastal city in the Gladstone Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , the Gladstone urban area had a population of 45,185 people. It is by road north-west of the state capital, Brisbane, and south-east of Rockhampton, Queensl ...
) is an Australian former professional
rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...
footballer who played in the 2000s. A
Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...
State of Origin representative hooker, he played his club football in the
NRL The National Rugby League (also known as the NRL Telstra Premiership for sponsorship reasons) is a professional rugby league competition in Oceania which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria (state), Victoria, the Austral ...
for the
Parramatta Eels The Parramatta Eels are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL). The Parramatta District Rugby League Football Club was formed in 1947, and ...
,
New Zealand Warriors The Warriors are a professional rugby league football club based in Auckland, New Zealand that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL) premiership and is the League's only team from outside Australia. They were formed in 1995 as the Aucklan ...
and
Brisbane Broncos The Brisbane Broncos are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Red Hill, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland. Founded in April 1987, the Broncos compete in the National Rugby League (NRL) and play their home games at ...
.


Background

Named after his uncle, Peter John Marsh, who was killed in a car accident before PJ was born, he attended and played
rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...
for
St. Brendan's College, Yeppoon St. Brendan's College (SBC) is an Independent school, independent Catholic school, Catholic secondary day and boarding school, boarding school for boys, located in Yeppoon, Queensland, Australia. The school was founded by the Congregation of Chr ...
. Marsh is of distant Aboriginal descent. He is also Christian.


Playing career

Marsh played for the
Central Queensland Capras The Central Queensland Capras are a semi-professional rugby league football club primarily based in Rockhampton, Queensland and representing Central Queensland. They play in the Hostplus Cup in Queensland, which is a second-tier competition in ...
in the 1998
Queensland Cup The Queensland Cup, currently known as the Hostplus Cup for sponsorship reasons, is the highest-level regional rugby league, rugby league football competition in Queensland, Australia. It is run by the Queensland Rugby League, Queensland Rugby ...
. Marsh began his NRL career at the
Parramatta Eels The Parramatta Eels are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL). The Parramatta District Rugby League Football Club was formed in 1947, and ...
and made his first grade debut on 23 April 2000 against the
Newcastle Knights The Newcastle Knights are an Australian professional rugby league team based in Newcastle, New South Wales that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL) premiership. Playing in red and blue, the Knights joined the top-tier competition in New ...
. Marsh played in Parramatta's preliminary final defeat by the
Brisbane Broncos The Brisbane Broncos are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Red Hill, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland. Founded in April 1987, the Broncos compete in the National Rugby League (NRL) and play their home games at ...
during the same year. In the
2001 NRL season The 2001 NRL season was the 94th season of professional rugby league football in Australia and the fourth run by the National Rugby League. Also called the 2001 Telstra Premiership (due to sponsorship from Telstra Corporation) it was contested ...
, Marsh made 22 appearances as Parramatta won the minor premiership after losing only 2 games all year in the regular season. Marsh played for Parramatta from the bench in their
2001 NRL grand final The 2001 NRL Grand Final was the conclusive and premiership-deciding game of the 2001 NRL season. It was contested at Stadium Australia in Sydney by the Newcastle Knights (who had finished the regular season in third place), and the Parramatta E ...
loss to the
Newcastle Knights The Newcastle Knights are an Australian professional rugby league team based in Newcastle, New South Wales that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL) premiership. Playing in red and blue, the Knights joined the top-tier competition in New ...
. Parramatta had gone into the match as heavy favourites and the grand final loss has been described as one of the biggest upsets of all time. Marsh then moved to the
New Zealand Warriors The Warriors are a professional rugby league football club based in Auckland, New Zealand that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL) premiership and is the League's only team from outside Australia. They were formed in 1995 as the Aucklan ...
. He made his
Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...
debut in the
2002 State of Origin series The 2002 State of Origin series saw the 21st time that the annual three-game series between the Queensland and New South Wales representative rugby league football teams was played entirely under ' state of origin' selection rules. It was the s ...
, playing in games I and III. He later also played games in the
2003 2003 was designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Fresh water, Freshwater. In 2003, a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition 2003 invasion of Iraq, invaded Iraq, starting the Iraq War. Demographic ...
and
2008 State of Origin series The 2008 State of Origin series was the 27th year that the annual best-of-three series of interstate rugby league football matches between the Queensland and New South Wales representative teams was contested entirely under ' state of origin' s ...
. He started for the Warriors at hooker in their
2002 NRL Grand Final The 2002 NRL Grand Final was the conclusive and premiership-deciding game of the 2002 NRL season. It took place on Sunday, 6 October 2002, at Sydney's Telstra Stadium. 80,130 people saw the Sydney Roosters beat the New Zealand Warriors 30–8. ...
loss to the
Sydney Roosters Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Football Club, known as the Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Eastern Suburbs. The club competes in the National Rugby Lea ...
. In the Round 14 game against Parramatta on 14 June 2003, Marsh sustained a serious
neck The neck is the part of the body in many vertebrates that connects the head to the torso. It supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that transmit sensory and motor information between the brain and the rest of the body. Addition ...
injury during a relatively minor crusher tackle by Parramatta second-rower Darren Treacy. In an interview with ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...
'' in 2022, Marsh recalled hearing a couple of cracking noises during the tackle, then feeling an intense pain throughout his entire body as he attempted to play the ball, stating: "It scared the absolute shit out of me. You try to wiggle your toes and move your fingers. It's a shocking fear. They put me in a brace. Then an ambulance. Then hospital and I couldn't move for two days." The injury ruled him out for the rest of the
2003 NRL season The 2003 NRL premiership was the 96th season of professional rugby league football in Australia and the sixth run by the National Rugby League. Fifteen teams competed, with the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles returning in place of their failed joint ...
as well as the whole of 2004. Despite Marsh's injury and being sidelined until 2005, Treacy was not charged. Following a three-year stint with the Warriors, Marsh returned to Parramatta for the
2005 NRL season The 2005 NRL season was the 98th season of professional rugby league football in Australia and the eighth run by the National Rugby League. The lineup of clubs remained unchanged from the previous year, with fifteen teams contesting the 2005 Tels ...
. Marsh was part of the Parramatta side which won the minor premiership in 2005 but lost 29-0 in the preliminary final to North Queensland. Marsh's final game for Parramatta was the club's preliminary final defeat by
Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...
in the 2007 preliminary final. In November 2007, Marsh signed a three-year deal with the
Brisbane Broncos The Brisbane Broncos are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Red Hill, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland. Founded in April 1987, the Broncos compete in the National Rugby League (NRL) and play their home games at ...
and returned to his home state of Queensland. Marsh has said he didn't consider himself to be the same player during his final years with Parramatta and Brisbane, following the neck injury he sustained in 2003. After playing five games in 2009, Marsh suffered a back injury which ultimately led to him retiring on medical grounds in March 2010, with the Brisbane Broncos paying out the final year of his contract in full. Because of his experience, Marsh is advocating for a crackdown on dangerous tackles in rugby league by having stronger penalties and deterrents including more sin binning and suspensions. Marsh said he remembers thinking crusher tackles were a "load of shit" when he first witnessed them come into the game, describing them as "worse than a punch", and said $1000 fines were a meaningless deterrent to highly paid athletes and wants players to be punished with suspensions instead.


Retirement

In 2022, Marsh revealed he had developed a hatred for rugby league after his retirement. Marsh blamed the NRL for abandoning him after his injury, which left him with the inability to do things such as go for a run or use a gym, while also being left to pay tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, which included regular trips to Brisbane to see specialists and undergo tests and MRI scans. Marsh accused the NRL for failing to assist him in any way and stated: "I couldn't believe the game wiped me the way they did" and claimed nobody had checked on him since his retirement. He said his
mental health Mental health is often mistakenly equated with the absence of mental illness. However, mental health refers to a person's overall emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It influences how individuals think, feel, and behave, and how t ...
had been adversely affected during his retirement and he began to loathe rugby league, became reluctant to allow his children to play the sport and gave away most of his jerseys, apart from one State of Origin jersey which remained in the family. According to Marsh: "At my lowest points I felt pretty damn ordinary. I hated football, I hated everything. I didn’t watch it, I didn’t want my kids to play. I gave all my jerseys away. My Warriors grand final jerseys. I didn’t want anything to remind me of the shit I’d been through... I didn't want my kids to play because I was that filthy on the game... I was still angry about what had been taken away from me." Marsh lived in
Middlemount Middlemount is a rural town and Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Isaac Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , the locality of Middlemount had a population of 1,899 people. It is nicknamed the "Giant Peanut" by some locals du ...
for several years with his family which he said was to hide away from the world. As his mental health improved, Marsh completed a
Certificate IV The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) specifies the standards for educational qualifications in Australia. It is administered nationally by the Australian Government's Department of Education, with oversight from the States and Territ ...
in
youth work Youth work is a community support activity aimed at older children and adolescents. Depending upon the culture and the community, different services and institutions may exist for this purpose. In general, it provides an environment where young pe ...
and worked at
headspace Headspace may refer to: Science and technology * Headspace gas chromatography, a technique in analytical chemistry * Headspace or ullage, the unfilled space in a container * Headspace technology, the gaseous constituents of a closed space abo ...
for two years. Unable to hold back their ambitions of being like their father, Marsh's wife Kelly registered their children to play rugby league while he was out of town. However, their interest in the game has since inspired Marsh to become involved with rugby league again.


Personal life

Marsh lives with his wife and children in Yeppoon and he works on a
drill rig A drilling rig is an integrated system that Drilling, drills wells, such as oil or water wells, or holes for piling and other construction purposes, into the earth's subsurface. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to ...
at one the Central Queensland coal mines. Marsh's eldest son Braelan played in the Under-16s boys team in the Queensland Rugby League's Cyril Connell Challenge in 2022 and was signed to the Dolphins Academy. Marsh's daughter Waverley played for The Highlanders at
Murri Rugby League Carnival The Qld Murri Carnival (QAIHC Arthur Beetson Foundation Murri Rugby League Carnival) is an annual four-day rugby league carnival for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Queensland rugby league teams. Queensland Rugby League (QRL) has awarded t ...
in 2021 where she scored nine tries and was named in the Queensland Merit team. She was also part of the winning "beef" team in the annual Beef Vs Reef game at
Browne Park Browne Park is a rectangular football stadium located in the Rockhampton suburb of Wandal, Queensland, Australia. The venue has been the home of rugby football in Central Queensland since 1890 and today also hosts rugby union and soccer match ...
in Rockhampton in 2022. In 2022, Marsh's youngest son Jay was a member of the Yeppoon Seagulls Under 14's team competing in the Junior Rocky Rustlers rugby league competition.


References


External links


Brisbane Broncos profile
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Marsh, PJ 1980 births Living people Australian Christians Australian rugby league players Brisbane Broncos players Central Queensland Capras players Indigenous Australian rugby league players 21st-century Indigenous Australian people New Zealand Warriors players Parramatta Eels players Queensland Rugby League State of Origin players Rugby league halfbacks Rugby league hookers Rugby league players from Gladstone, Queensland 21st-century Australian sportsmen