North Coast Marlins: Built the Hard Way

The North Coast Marlins don’t arrive with mystery signings or headline names. They arrive prepared.

That’s been their edge since the beginning. Coach Francis Bennett has been in this thing from year one, when he entered two sides and decided the Nines wasn’t something you dabble in. It’s something you commit to. Since then, he’s embraced the format fully, building not just a team, but a system around it.

That system now runs deeper. Two feeder sides, the North Coast Kings and North Coast Titans, rolled through the Sydney and Brisbane Qualifiers. Neither qualified. Both mattered. Reps were banked. Combinations tested. Nines lessons learned the hard way. That experience flows straight back into the Marlins’ main squad.

They’re young. They’re fit. And they work.

The Marlins’ danger is simple: they don’t give you easy minutes. They chase everything. They recover quickly. They turn games into effort contests, then keep dragging you back into them even when you think you’ve broken clear. That approach has already shown it can stretch the competition’s heavyweights.

Last year, they proved they could live in those games. They matched it with United SC early. They knocked off the Southern Sharks. They carried momentum deep into the weekend before running into Legacy in the Shield Final.

That’s where the gap showed.

Alex Glenn’s side didn’t do anything fancy. They just executed cleaner, longer, and with the kind of professional calm that only comes from years inside elite systems. When fatigue set in and decisions mattered, the Marlins blinked first.

That’s the worry again this year.

North Coast don’t have the same professional scaffolding to lean on when things tighten. They don’t have decades of NRL muscle memory sitting in the middle of the field. Their margin comes from preparation and effort, not pedigree.

And Pool Two won’t offer much grace.

United SC are waiting again. This will be the third time the Marlins have lined up against them in pool play. History hasn’t been kind. United’s power and rotation have eventually told, every time.

For North Coast, the equation is clear. They need to start fast, like they did last year. Build belief early. Bank wins before legs get heavy and margins narrow.

They’ve done the work.
Now they need to hold it long enough for it to matter.