Diehard Tigers fans have a seemingly endless of moments where you wonder “if only”.
If only Benny Elias kicked the ball a metre higher in the 1989 grand final and missed the cross-bar.
If only Chris Heighington dived on the ball in the 2010 qualifying final against the Roosters.
If only Braith Anasta didn’t land a miraculous field goal 20 seconds later.
If only Lote Tuqiri caught the bomb from the Warriors’ Shaun Johnson in the 2011 semi-final.
Over the last few months I’ve found myself wondering, “If only the Tigers were run more like a business, rather than a footy club.”
We wouldn’t agree to contracts and transfers that would leave us paying stupid amounts of money to players and coaches no longer at the club.
We’d spend more efforts on front-house activities like attracting corporate sponsorship and partnerships for third-party deals to top up our stars’ salaries outside of the cap.
We’d run the club with a MoneyBall philosophy: build cheap yet talented players into superstars and sell them off to other clubs for profit to, again, solve cash-flow issues.
All legitimate activities that an organisation would discuss as a way of turning around results and avoiding folding entirely.
It was with this hat on that I viewed the news of the club looking to part ways with captain Robbie Farah.
My first reaction was one of positivity; a great business decision aimed at limiting the liability caught up in one player’s performance, given the amount of cap he consumes. A look to the future of the club.
There are too many examples of football players who don’t live in the ‘real world’. This was another example of how, in the ‘real world’, this decision wouldn’t even be blinked at. A company in today’s economy cares not about the tenure of its employees, but focuses on performance and results. How do I get the most out of my staff to drive profits and shareholder satisfaction?
The rugby league’s favourite word, loyalty, reared its head. This time it was the players asking for loyalty, which seemed a little hypocritical, especially coming from Tim Moltzen, who the Tigers stuck by during the 2011 contract backflip with St George Illawarra, and who has arguably spent more time on the sideline than the field since signing back with the Tigers.
Despite all of this clear reasoning and comparison, there’s one thing that this theory doesn’t take into account: the fans.
In business, the only external parties influencing the direction of the business are its shareholders. That’s where the comparison stops. A shareholder’s only interest in the company is financial; they don’t sit on the company’s floor, cheering it on until they’re blue in the face.
Fans are the determining factor in the success of rugby league clubs.
On matchday they drive ticket sales, pie sales, beer sales.
The rest of the time they drive merchandise sales, membership sales, sponsorship sales (what company wants to advertise with a team that no one is interested in watching?).
It is passion, desire, and dare I say it, loyalty, which keeps these fans coming back every year. Without these fans, clubs have no way to stay afloat without NRL assistance; which funnily enough, derives the majority of its revenue from broadcast deals driven by… fans!
For the record, I agree with the decision made by the Wests Tigers. Farah is in the twilight of his career, and has seemingly had too much influence over past club decisions.
But the way in which the whole saga has been handled again shows the ineptitude of the Tigers hierarchy and a complete disregard to the customers it serves, the fans. With a new board and a new coach, fans had hoped that days like this were behind them.
To put it in context; if next year Robbie Farah earns $1 million within a $6.8 million dollar salary cap, that is less than 15 per cent of the Tigers overall cap.
Yet there has been no justification and no real comment addressing a man who has been a fan favourite for almost 13 years. The club has simply put out an “it is what it is” statement and sent its coach out to face the media.
Does the club think fans will continue to show up and empty their wallets when the board keep making decisions costing them more money in the long run? It defies common sense, but then again, no one will ever accuse the Tigers hierarchy of having that!
Dean Lawrence
Roar Rookie
I agree with you, however you lost me at "red-hot halves combination." :) I do agree that it is the best move, and it makes sense to throw more money at the future of the club. But the mismanagement of the entire fiasco is appalling, and leaves fans continuing to question how the board go about making and announcing these decisions.
Johnnyball
Guest
Think this is about who is really running the club.
Jarijari
Guest
As an old Tigers fan, Dean, I can agree with your eloquent sentiments to a certain extent but, realistically, how did Robbie get to be worth (even with a backended deal), nearly $1 million a year? Sure he was the (clichéd) heart and soul of a club long regarded as the most ineptly administered in the NRL, but on his form over the past couple of years and his inability to work with coaches, and indeed many of the players, since Tim Sheens left the Tigers, Robbie's value to the team has plummeted on an inverse proportion to his overall worth -- now probably less than half of that $2 million for the next two seasons. To ensure they kept the red-hot rookie halves combination, the immensely talented Luke Brooks and Mitchell Moses, the Tigers forked out $500,000 each, upped by $100,000 next season to ensure they stay at Leichhardt. Their two best players over the past couple of seasons, James Tedesco and Aaron Woods, are reportedly on similar pay, or possibly a bit less. Put those figures together, without the significant, and legitimate, third-party deals that many other clubs have been able to pick up, and you don't have much change out of a $6.6 million salary cap. Consider the minimum wage for the 25 first grade squad players is $80,000, that's $2 million for starters. Of course, on top of this, there are under-the-table payments that virtually all the clubs have been sprung for, some of them massive amounts, including the Tigers themselves pinged for almost $400,000 over the cap in 2010. Well maybe they no longer have the means to cover such risky excesses anyway. While it may seem a cruel send-off for Robbie, the enhancement of keeping blokes like Tedesco (who may well be very much worth a $1 million a year or more himself in the near future), Woods, Brooks and Moses, and unfortunately dispensing with the likes of Chris Lawrence and Keith Galloway, along with Pat Richards, should ensure a solid base for the club's future and maybe a bit of spare change to finally buy a couple of big forwards.