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The clouds have cleared on a dismal season for the Wests Tigers, with gun halfback Luke Brooks named Dally M Rookie of the Year on the same day the NRL club announced their new coach.
Former playmaking star Jason Taylor has been unveiled as the man to take over the top job at the Tigers – and a key aspect of his job description is to guide Brooks to greatness.
Taylor sat in the audience at Sydney’s The Star on Monday night and would have found it difficult to contain his excitement when his star No.7 for next year was read out as the game’s best young talent for the season just gone.
Brooks, who beat South Sydney try-scoring freak Alex Johnston to the award, is also looking forward to matching up with a coach who has specialist knowledge of his position.
“It’s exciting news and I can’t wait to get into the pre-season and start working with (Taylor),” Brooks told AAP.
“Obviously he’ll be good because he was a halfback and with me being a halfback it will help me a lot. I can see that as a positive.”
The recognition can only mean good things for a Tigers side which is trying to get rid of baggage, but promises so much.
After a brilliant start to the year, the Wests Tigers tailed off badly in 2014 as injuries and rumblings about the shaky future of now sacked coach Mick Potter began to surface.
However, through it all, Brooks went about his business with all the hallmarks of a future household name.
As small as any halfback to have played the game, Brooks showed his heart is as big as some of the most diminutive stars to have gone before him – the likes of Langer, Sterling, Stuart, Toovey and Andrew Johns to name but a few.
Things didn’t always go his way, but Brooks consistently showed a willingness to take the line on and more often than not would take the right option with ball in hand.
The good thing for Brooks, Tigers fans and Taylor is that the teenager isn’t a one-man band.
There to support the anticipated rise of the Brooks is the equally exciting Mitchell Moses at five-eighth and the injury-plagued but brilliant young fullback James Tedesco.
Taylor has plenty of knowledge he can impart on Brooks.
The experienced coach was a schoolboy star at Western Suburbs nursery St Gregory’s Campbelltown.
He won a Rothmans Medal with North Sydney in 1996 and took the Bears to the finals more often than not.
As the most accomplished goal kicker of his time, Taylor knew how to deliver under pressure.
Now he has the chance to teach the NRL’s best rookie.
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