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Jason Taylor’s position at the Wests Tigers had become untenable once the club discovered it had endured almost five years without a contract payout.
The coach was coldly given his marching orders following an emergency board meeting yesterday, consolidating the club in its favoured position of complete and utter disarray.
In a traditional move, the board opted to sack Taylor with immediate effect and grant a full payout of his contractual entitlements.
This ensured the Tigers remained compliant with its charter of paying people large sums to do anything but work for them.
Taylor will now take his place alongside Tim Sheens as a former employee with a fully-funded investment portfolio that could’ve been used to return Balmain Leagues back to solvency.
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A straight-laced, gawky fellow, whose hats never seem to fit him, Taylor arrived at the Tigers looking to simply bring stability to an organisation with a lengthy history of bad ideas.
The tenure began in trademark Tigers fashion when the coach arrived for pre-season training to be greeted with a pin-less grenade.
Predictably, predecessor Mick Potter left Taylor to inherit a flunky list, factions and rotting facilities, a working environment described by the board as “healthier than usual”.
But from the outset, his desire to instil the club with professionalism put him immediately offside with those in power.
Under an administration struggling to retain everything from personnel to decorum, Taylor’s calm demeanour and lack of a drinking problem did nothing to add to the Tigers’ penchant for public exhibitions of self-harm.
After months of toil and trouble, many believed his cards were ultimately marked following the Robbie Farah saga.
The fashion in which Taylor continually failed to yield to the hooker’s regular baiting was viewed as disrespectful to the club’s unwritten law of keeping nothing in-house.
This left Farah with the unenviable job of making up the shortfall caused by Taylor’s public civility, forcing him to generate twice the amount of turmoil by provocatively staging multiple farewells.
Despite winning a small amount of support at board level after he unknowingly oversaw the Tim Simona saga, in the end Taylor’s steadiness was too much for the organisation to bear.
The board’s decision was also brought about by whispers emerging from the contract talks of James Tedesco, Mitchell Moses, Aaron Woods and Luke Brooks, most notably the star quartet’s concerns for “what lies ahead at the club”.
In response, with the four seeking a glimpse into the future, the board decided honesty was the best policy.
So they sacked a coach.