Benji Marshall says Ivan Cleary will be in charge at the Wests Tigers next year, and has his own theories on why the coach may have briefly flirted with a return to Penrith.
"Who wouldn't want to coach their son and be involved with that," Marshall said. "I feel like, and these are my own words, but maybe Ivan thought by him going to Penrith, that would have taken the decision out of Nathan's hands to have to leave his friends and be coached by his dad.
One more year: Benji Marshall.
"That's not what he thinks, but that's what I thought. It's an enticing prospect to coach your son.
"Hearing him talk to the boys and his commitment to fulfil his contract, I've got no doubts he'll be here.
"Just talking to him, I know from spending time with Ivan, he really cares about integrity."
After Thursday night's 51-10 heavy loss against South Sydney, Cleary was asked by Fairfax Media if he could guarantee he would see out the remaining two years on his deal.
Unlike others in the game, a categorical "yes" from Cleary would actually be true.
"I have said what I said about that," Cleary said. "I have a contract here. I have said all I need to say. I get that people want to discuss it. I get there is an agenda about various things outside the game but I think I have made my position clear."
Nathan will make a call on his own future in November, and with some Penrith types confident about Ivan's pending return, it only adds to the angst of Tigers' fans.
Marshall said he sat down for "three or four hours" with his wife Zoe and wrote down the pros and cons of playing on.
Financially, Marshall said it would have been better to not play on.
Robbie Farah, who also recommitted during the week for one more year, harassed his good mate to keep playing to the point he became "annoying".
Zoe wanted Marshall to try and reach 300 NRL games. He has now notched 291. He showed he still has something to off with pieces of brilliance which created the Tigers' only two tries against Souths.
But it was Cleary's faith that proved the real deal-breaker.
"I had a good chat to Ivan about [my future], he pointed out clearly how much he wanted me to play again, and that was probably the thing that swayed me to play, just his keenness of having me around again," said Marshall, who will be 34 when next season kicks off. "If he said to me, 'I don't know where you will fit in, and there might not be as much opportunity next year', I wouldn't have played.
"I put everything on the table with Zoe, we took three or four hours going through all the positives and negatives of playing.
"There weren't a lot of negatives. When you think about your family, obviously financially it was better for me to not play. But it's money. If that's the reason I won't play it's a stupid reason not to play.
"I didn't want to regret retiring."
The Tigers will finish ninth on the ladder, and while there will be no mass batch of new faces like last year, Marshall said genuine stars Farah and Moses Mbye were two reasons alone to be optimistic about 2019.
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