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It’s always been a case of survival of the fittest in the rugby league jungle and the Wests Tigers are the most vulnerable target as the NRL enters an era of change.
The western Sydney joint venture is mired in a struggle to break a cycle of under-achievement which has dogged the franchise for all but three of their 22 previous seasons.
Since their formation in 2000, the Wests Tigers have made the finals precisely three times – their amazing premiership-winning year of 2005 and the 2010 and ‘11 teams also coached by Tim Sheens.
When the Magpies and Balmain announced at the end of 1999 that they intended to merge, Eels CEO Denis Fitzgerald infamously said: “This development will please no-one at the NRL – two struggling clubs getting together. I believe that will only mean a struggling joint venture with no great long-term future.”
He was somewhat bitter about the move because he’d held talks about merging his club with Balmain to form a Parramatta Tigers joint venture in which the Eels would pretty much swallow up their fellow Sydney side.
But unfortunately for Wests Tigers fans, they have struggled – no other team has missed the finals 19 times since their foundation year of 2000. Even the Gold Coast Titans, who came into existence seven years later, have made the playoffs more than them at four times.
The Tigers should be one of the NRL’s powerhouses – they the massive junior nursery at Campbelltown and enormous supporter base from traditional Balmain and Magpies supporters as well as those who grew up watching Benji Marshall and co entertain their way to a title.
But the Benji era is long gone and the past 11 years have represented a continuous cycle of overpaying players, letting the wrong ones leave and a succession of coaches from Sheens to Mick Potter, to Jason Taylor to Ivan Cleary and Michael Maguire.
Their hopes of ending the NRL’s longest playoff drought look all but over after three winless matches to start 2022 and yet again, calls are coming thick and fast for Maguire to pay the price for their mediocre results.
Maguire says he has the support of Sheens, who was drafted back to the club late last year to oversee the latest rebuild of the football program, and he has reciprocated with a public show of support.
“I’m that busy coaching my team I don’t tend to spend too much time worrying about the external world and I’ve got a great family to go home to and that’s what really matters the most,” he said on Thursday.
“We were pretty close in two out of our three games. From our performances, a few things go our way, which we need to create, then all of a sudden we’re talking about something different.
“We’re actually not that far away from where we need to be. We need to make sure we work really hard to achieve those wins.”
All the kind words in the world are not going to help a coach who had arguably the NRL’s least potent roster to start the season with Adam Doueihi, Tommy Talau and Shawn Blore on the long-term injured list.
Add to that a three-game suspension to Jackson Hastings and young prop Stefano Utoikamanu’s ankle surgery putting him out for two months and it’s no surprise the Tigers are favourites to collect the wooden spoon at season’s end.
The NRL has made it clear in recent years that head office will no longer be bailing out clubs if they get into financial strife with the increase in TV rights revenue leading to a bump in the annual grants issued to the franchises.
Basically the clubs were told, stand on your own two feet or your future will no longer be guaranteed.
The Wests Tigers have taken over from Cronulla and Manly as the club most likely to be in the firing line if the amount of clubs in the crowded Sydney marketplace is rationalised.
With the Dolphins coming into the competition next year and an 18th franchise likely to be given the green light before the end of the next broadcast rights cycle in 2027, there is change on the horizon.
There’s no suggestion the Tigers are in trouble but just like in the jungle, you don’t have to be the fastest beast, you just can’t be the slowest.
The blame for the Tigers’ recent decade of woe does not rest solely on the shoulders of one player but the signing of Adam Blair in 2012 has unfortunately been the catalyst for a prolonged downswing.
On the surface it looked like a great pick-up.
The Tigers had gone perilously close to making the 2010 grand final only to be denied by a Jamie Soward field goal in an epic preliminary final against St George Illawarra.
They returned to the post-season the following year but were eliminated 22-20 in the semi-final stage by the Warriors on their barnstorming run to the grand final.
Blair, who had starred in a couple of grand final wins at Melbourne which were later stripped and become a Kiwi international, was seen as one of the most damaging forwards in the game.
But his arrival also meant other players were moved on – a young prop in Andrew Fifita and an older one in Bryce Gibbs went to the Sharks and were joined in the next couple of seasons by a succession of old Wests teammates in Beau Ryan, Chris Heighington and Blake Ayshford as the salary cap tightened at TigerTown.
None of this would have mattered as much if Blair lived up to his potential at the Tigers but he never had the same kind of impact as he’d done at the Storm.
The club was unravelling and Sheens eventually paid the price, sacked at the end of 2012, then taking the club to court for unfair dismissal and now he’s back to save them.
And then Benji Marshall wanted out, trying rugby union in a short-lived stint at the Auckland Blues.
Robbie Farah (left) and Benji Marshall. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett)
At this point the club could have, should have and did bottom out. They were 15th the year Benji left and 13th the year after under Potter but he then was jettisoned for Taylor.
His time was marred by his feud with Robbie Farah, who the club wanted to offload because of his high salary. Farah and Taylor’s reputations copped a hefty whack because of the poor decisions made by faceless officials in the background.
But by 2017 the team’s fortunes were looking up with a young core of Luke Brooks, James Tedesco, Aaron Woods and Mitch Moses set to provide the foundation for a return to the finals.
Cleary had taken the reins early in the season and there was at least a pathway apparent for a return to respectability. Get on the bus, Cleary proclaimed.
And then Moses decided his future lay elsewhere at Parramatta and jumped ship mid-season and by the end of the year, Tedesco had opted to join the Roosters and Woods – despite having a tattoo of the Leichhardt postcode of 2040 – took up a lucrative offer from Canterbury (which didn’t last long before he then became a Shark).
Halfback Luke Brooks has been one of the few constants in the team over the past seven years and is the magnet for critics. He’s a good player, not a great one. Is it his fault that the Tigers paid overs to retain him because they had four free agents at the same time managed by the same agent? Or that the club has stuffed up its recruitment around him?
When Cleary, quite understandably, informed the club he wanted to return to Penrith to coach his son Nathan at the end of 2018, the Wests Tigers were initially furious but trumpeted the signing of Maguire as a coup.
They were happy to feed the narrative to league journalists that they had upgraded their coach to one who had a premiership on his resume.
However, Maguire’s three years have resulted in a gradual decline from ninth to 11th to 13th last season. On recent form, they will be lucky to keep the mathematical trend going by rising to the dizzying heights of 15th in 2022.
(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
The ongoing problem throughout the decade-plus of under-achievement is the Tigers have never been able to build a finals calibre roster through a lack of retaining their own young talent, a propensity to overpay for recruits and a succession of high-profile potential recruits do the negotiating dance and then back out at the last minute like Latrell Mitchell and Josh Addo-Carr.
The Foxx is one of several young stars on the rise who passed through the club before finding stardom elsewhere, along with Blake Austin and Ryan Papenhuyzen.
Tigers fans won’t like to be reminded of some of their names but their recruits since 2012 have included the likes of Braith Anasta and Matt Utai when they were well past their prime, Ryan Matterson – who quickly decided to head elsewhere, Kiwi trio Elijah Taylor, Ben Matulino and Russell Packer, Josh Reynolds, Moses Mbye, Chris McQueen and Joey Leilua.
None of those players were terrible but they did not outperform their contract value and unless you have players doing that, your team will not be finals contenders. All of them played better when at other clubs than when they were wearing Wests Tigers colours. Unfortunately it looks like current quartet Joe Ofahengaue, James Roberts, James Tamou and Tyrone Peachey will continue that trend.
They have reinforcements coming next year in Panthers hooker Api Koroisau and Parramatta forward Isaiah Papali’i.
The Tigers have potential 200-game first-graders in the early stages of their career in Doueihi, fullback Daine Laurie, Blore, Utoikamanu and Talau.
(Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)
But they need to stick by them and not look for yet another quick fix. That’s not ideal for the coach who has won a premiership at his previous club and after three years of trying to turn the team’s fortunes around, it will be hard for him to remain at the helm beyond this season let alone until the end of his contract next year or beyond.
Maguire said on Thursday part of the reason behind their loss to the Warriors last Friday was due to their inexperienced spine of Jock Madden, Laurie and Jacob Liddle combining with Brooks.
“We’ve taken some harsh lessons out of that one, I guess I say that quite often,” he said.
“We’re going through a period of time now where we’ve got a number of young guys who’ve come into our squad that are learning how to play at this level and you can’t just step in and think you can do it. You’ve got to do it over and over and that’s what we’re doing at the moment.
“We’re going through a tough period but that’s what makes tough clubs.”