Wests Tigers are back in 2016

After their 30-14 victory over the South Sydney Rabbitohs last night there can be no doubt that the Wests Tigers are back in play for 2016.

For the first time since 2009 the black and gold have beaten the Bunnies twice in the space of a single season – and in four weeks no less.

Throughout the game, Ray Warren and Gus Gould got into a deep banter groove about telepathy and geometry, with Archimedes and Pythagoras being liberally quoted at key moments in the action.

It was an appropriate comic riff for the kinds of seamless communication that the Tigers demonstrated across the course of the evening, as well as the almost mathematical precision with which they set up some of their tries.

For the first part of the game, however, it didn’t necessarily look as if things would go in the Tigers’ direction.

While there were lots of echoes of last week’s free-flowing mobility, the Souths defence kept on regathering just before the Steeden could make it over the line.

At the fifth minute an Alex Johnston knock-on gave the boys possession within the twenty-metre line but they couldn’t seem to come good.

Similarly, an Ado-Carr knock-on that retrospectively turned an Adam Reynolds miskick into a Souths asset seemed to have Tigers disappointment written all over it.

Nevertheless, things started to look up with a desperate try from Mitchell Moses in the eighteenth minute.

The four-pointer was all the more satisfying in that Moses had been denied a couple of minutes earlier for a knock-on during a one-on-one with Johnston, whose freakish powers at the try-line looked like it just might consign the Tiges to the dustbin.

After Luke Brooks straightened the attack, however, Moses made good.

As if that wasn’t enough, two minutes later Tim Simona managed to run half the length of the field to score the second try of the Game two weeks in a row.

In an earlier article for The Roar, I held up Simona’s four-pointer against the Chooks at Allianz last week as the standard to which the Tigers need to aspire.

It was clear that Simona felt the same, not only equalling but outdoing his previous effort for what may be the greatest try laid down in his career to date.

The fact that it was almost the same stable of players who set up the try – with the addition of Dene Halatau – only added to the sense that this was both a reprise and a consolidation.

This time around, the try was also set up by a series of gorgeous passes deep in Souths territory, and while they were more compressed and tighter than last week, that just made their sense of fluidity and expansiveness feel all the more impressive.

It was one of those moments in a footy match where even the shortest passes seem to contain the breadth and scope of the final dash.

From the moment the ball headed towards the Tigers touch line you could feel it breathing, becoming more mobile and fluid with each moment that passed.

In effect, the black and gold were handling the Steeden as if it was soaked, using last week’s wet-weather conditions as an inspiration for a free-floating, fast-moving, fluid signature that frequently harked back to the glory days of 2005.

It didn’t hurt, either, that Simona’s moment of glory came off the back of one of the biggest defensive maelstroms so far in the game.

Only moments before, James Tedesco had spent about fifteen seconds dodging and weaving in and around the Souths line, trying to find a way through an impenetrable mass of cardinal and myrtle bodies.

With both the first and second tries coming off the back of missed opportunities, the first half suddenly took on a comeback quality for the Tigers, who seemed to be dealing with their inner demons and learning to learn from their mistakes in front of our very eyes.

In the post-match rundown, Gus Gould made the simple yet powerful observation that a club culture in crisis doesn’t play like this, and in many ways watching the Tigers last night was like watching a team gradually putting a period of schism and turmoil behind them, as well as deflecting it into inspirational footy.

To cap it all off, David Nofualuma brought in a brilliant four-pointer just before half-time, on the back of yet another brilliant kick from Teddy.

So far, so good. However, as every Tigers fan knows, consistency is the biggest problem facing the boys from Balmain and Campbelltown.

It was a familiar feeling, then, when things started to fray in the second half and Souths ramped up their defence.

After a signature freakish try from Alex Johnston at the 55th minute it felt as if the Bunnies might be back in control, so it was brilliant to see Chris Lawrence take the ball over the line and maintain possession for a good ten seconds or so despite a massive Rabbitohs pack on his back.

If Simona had offered a lesson in dexterity, then Lawrence offered a lesson in pure grunt.

More to the point, Lawrence’s try occurred at exactly the point in the game when the Tigers generally start to flag. By storming through and holding on to the Steeden for dear life, he gave the boys a new lease on the game and the 2016 competition as a whole.

Whenever the Tigers miss an opportunity in the second half, it generally has a ripple effect, as one choke leads to another and the game gradually devolves.

Last night, however, the opposite occurred.

With Lawrence’s four-pointer buoying up the boys and reinforcing the synergy of the team, Kevin Naiqama brought in another try at the 63rd minute followed by an Origin-worthy dash from Robbie Farah to bring the Steeden over the line at the 66-minute mark – in what was arguably a more compelling case for a Blues jersey than anything he’s done in the actual Blues jersey so far this year.

For my money, there hasn’t been a better ten minutes of Tigers football in 2016.

As the camera cut between replays of Robbie’s fifty-metre dash and Jason Taylor’s priceless reaction shot it felt as if these two frenemies might finally be back in the friend zone.

In the post-match interview Robbie was gracious about being played off the bench, while Gus also pointed out that the No.9’s brilliant try proved that Taylor had a plan for him all along.

Although I’ve been critical of Taylor at times in the past, I have to admit that last night was a testament to his vision as a coach, especially in the buildup to Simona’s try, which is the kind of textbook strategic execution that Madden-esque video analysts salivate over.

It was classic coaching football, destined to be debated and dissected all week.

One of the main marks of an organised team is that they can play out of formation. Brooks’ decision to pass straight to Simona instead of locating one of the forwards was a thing of beauty, as was Teddy’s split-second instinct to pass to Naiqama before he straightened up, leading to an oblique, awry play that seemed to spontaneously veer off and then correct itself with each fresh ingredient.

With Simona touching the ball twice in the course of that try, it felt as if he was the Tigers figurehead for the evening, so it was appropriate that he managed to land the boys’ last two points with a penalty kick on the final siren.

Even though it was a fairly small turnout, the roar felt deafening – the kind of noise you hear when a team is too far ahead to simply blame it on a depleted opposition.

Simona’s final kick was all the more dramatic in that this was a fairly spotty night for the boot in general.

With Moses only managing two out of six conversions and Reynolds one out of three, it was a game that was determined by tries more than anything else.

Moses, in particular, was much better with his hands than with his boot, although he had a fair bit of bad luck with his conversion attempts, including two that careened off the posts at the last minute.

Reynolds’ game, on the other hand, was just plain weird, full of the kinds of misdirected kicks that signify injury or utter exhaustion. Sometimes they were just wobbly and disorganised enough to unsettle the opposition, but for the most part he felt like a bit of a nonentity.

While the commentary team spent a fair bit of time speculating on the reason, post-Origin exhaustion seemed like the main culprit.

Playing your first game for the Blues is big enough, but to return to regular footy without a break is another thing entirely, especially when your next commute is to Perth – the most time zones traversed between any two NRL venues – only to lose in golden point.

On the flipside, last night felt like yet another argument for Teddy’s consideration as Blues fullback.

While it was great to see the Tigers wearing special socks to support Beyond Blue for this week’s mental health round, I must admit I got a certain kick out of seeing Teddy in blue regalia full stop.

As one of the most innovative and ingenious fullbacks in the game, as well as one of the best all-round entertainers, it’s crazy to think he mightn’t get a look-in.

Speaking of Blues representatives, last night also felt like the first time this season that Aaron Woods has started to live up to his hard man persona.

As if telepathically – there’s that word again – hooking into the discussions about him that have been preoccupying online footy forums more and more in the wake of Origin, Woodsy let go of his signature flop to put in some hard runs and brutal hit-ups, coming down with a scalp wound in the first ten minutes that required a fresh sweatband to mop up the excess spill.

With Woods on point, the Tigers were set for one of their best defensive efforts this season.

Sure, Souths didn’t put up much of a fight in the first half and were operating with a fairly diminished squad anyway.

Still, it felt as if last week’s flooded pitch and ever-accelerating game had given the Tigers a new lease on life as they made every effort to slip and slide one step ahead of their competitors.

Correspondingly, Souths became less and less entertaining, more and more intimidating and overbearing, culminating with a shoulder to Mitchell Moses’ face that saw him taken off in the final minute to a standing ovation from the crowd.

Combined with Simona’s two-pointer a couple of minutes later, it was the perfect ending to a triumphal game of football.

Of course, that’s not to discount some very strong moments from the Rabbitohs.

Still, it was a testament to the Tigers’ efforts that even Johnston’s freakishly superhuman abilities around the try-line were overshadowed, just as GI’s moments of conviction were largely swallowed up again by the game.

More than most other Souths players, GI has a knack for sensing the spaces that might open up a couple of plays ahead, but last night he couldn’t quite seem to make it work, a situation that wasn’t helped by Luke Keary’s last-minute withdrawal from the halves as well.

Still, like all of the Bunnies, GI put in enough of an effort for the Tigers’ win to feel meaningful and well-deserved.

Last week, Simona’s second try seemed like a dream come true. To see him repeat it was the turning-point that the boys need if they’re going to get their season back on track.

It’s a shame, in a way, that they have a bye next week, although it will do them good to have a rest before they take on the Storm again at AAMI Park.

Here’s hoping that they manage to cancel out Cooper Cronk’s field goal at Leichhardt Oval, the darkest moment for Tigers fans in quite some time.

Even if they don’t, though, I’m confident that they can play with the same heart and passion they showed last night, the most dramatic turning-point in their 2016 season so far.