Tom Marshall set to start at fullback for Chiefs [Waikato Times]
Tom Marshall signed with the Chiefs out of the Crusaders last year to come to a championship-winning side where he could play fullback and get top class coaching.
He's received the coaching but his first season hasn't quite panned out the way he might have expected as the Chiefs battle just to play a part in the Super Rugby playoffs and he has been switched all around the backline.
Marshall is back in the No 15 jersey tomorrow night in the Chiefs' final home game of the regular season against the Hurricanes - a do-or-die affair for which only two Chiefs backs have kept their places in the starting side and only Aaron Cruden will play in the same position as he played a week earlier against the Highlanders in Dunedin.
"I guess it's been a little bit of an indifferent season," Marshall said.
"We haven't quite clicked as a backline and probably not as a team so far so that's why you see different combinations.
"I guess [the regular changes are] a good thing. It always keeps players on edge and drives the competition within the squad."
Marshall has bounced around between fullback, wing and second five-eighth for the Chiefs in 2014 and admits they are all quite different positions to play.
"They are positions I'm fairly familiar with but it takes a bit of getting used to each week."
But Marshall is excited about tomorrow night's must-win match and believes the Chiefs can still get to the playoffs.
"We've got a home game, it's been a while since we've been at Waikato Stadium, we always seem to get a good crowd there and the boys know the importance of this game.
"It's as simple as if we lose we're out so we're treating it, and rightly so, as a knockout game, a quarterfinal and the boys have been training really well so hopefully we can just put it on the paddock."
The frustrating part for Marshall is not so much the fact he hasn't been able to settle into a regular role at fullback, where Gareth Anscombe has often been preferred, but that the Chiefs have been losing the close games they could and should have won in recent times.
"In the past, and even early doors this season, the Chiefs were winning those games. We're not quite there but we're not too far away and I guess that's the positive thing.
"Hopefully we will click this weekend and can carry that momentum into the Blues game," he said.
And Marshall is hopeful he will get the chance to come up against his brother James tomorrow night, the older Marshall having been named on the bench for the Hurricanes
