You don’t like the job Mitchell Marsh or Rod Marsh are doing. You think they’re doing it wrong. You think they shouldn’t be the ones doing it.

You feel like saying it. So, you do. That includes online, on sites such as The Roar.

You might make good points to support your opinion. But then you cross the line. You make a claim that shouldn’t be thrown around without some evidence to back it up.

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That claim is a variation on the one Roar commenter Raul made on Glenn Mitchell’s Thursday article:

“(Mitchell) Marsh is not international standard and we all know the only reason he is picked is that his Dad is a selector.”

Nepotism is a serious accusation, and not one to be made lightly.

Thankfully, fellow Roar commenter JohnB quickly pointed out the obvious flaw in such a “logic” – Geoff, not Rod, is the father of Mitchell and Shaun Marsh.

You might wonder why I’m bothering to write this article. After all, the claim was quickly and successfully challenged, and educated cricket fans know which Marsh is which.

Here’s why: put yourself in Marsh’s shoes. If you can’t do that, imagine if someone told you that you were only remaining in your job because of your father, even though that wasn’t true. Even though that person would only need to spend less than a minute online to find out that their reasoning for such a statement was completely wrong.

You’d be annoyed to say the least, and rightfully so. Aren’t we better than this?



To note that Mitchell Marsh hasn’t done much with the bat in his career, and that he perhaps shouldn’t be in the team despite scoring a half-century in the last Test in Sri Lanka, is fair. I would have Shaun Marsh instead of Mitchell Marsh in the team, and just worry about having six batsmen, one keeper and four bowlers.

Steve Smith’s own leg spin is handy, while David Warner and Adam Voges can both bowl some part-time spin.

I’m not unaware of potential drawbacks to the idea of playing four bowlers, and Smith doesn’t have Clarke’s knack with part-timers, but they are not insuperable problems.

As for Rod Marsh, the nature of his job means that everyone invariably thinks that they can do a better job than him.

There have certainly been selections during his time that I thought were mistaken. I’ve written on one of them before – the dropping of Cameron Boyce from Australia’s T20 team. Not because I didn’t think badly of Adam Zampa, but because the dropping went against the trend of giving the incumbent one more game to prove himself against a challenger, and Boyce wasn’t struggling with the ball at the time.

Yet, to trash the reputations of both men, based on a family link they do not actually have, is not a fair comment, and undermines credible arguments against their performance.

Quite apart from anything else, as I mentioned earlier, it takes less than a minute’s research to figure out that they are not father and son.



Seriously, to those who do insist on spouting this nonsense, you can look it up.

“But Pottsy. I looked it up and saw that there’s no family connection, and I’m still willing to argue that Marsh is only in the team because of his father.”

Well, to anyone who might think that, and I certainly hope that there isn’t, you need to improve as a human being more than Mitchell Marsh needs to improve as a Test cricketer.