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Opinion
The players voted for him as their new leader but the last person the Wests Tigers should have made captain is Api Koroisau.
After the way he openly sniggered at the Tigers’ premiership prospects at Penrith’s grand final fan day, the decision by the club to then appoint him as captain shows they are still the NRL’s whipping boy when it comes to how they’re viewed by players.
This is a club which over the past few years has thrown massive coin at a raft of high-profile free agents, including Latrell Mitchell, Josh Addo-Carr, Cameron Munster, and were continually knocked back.
Addo-Carr even signed a letter of intent with the Tigers before backing out of the deal to become a Bulldog. It looks like Mitchell Moses, after leaving them mid-season a few years back, is going to turn his back on them again despite being offered a not-so-small fortune to stay with Parramatta.
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Tigers fans thought the wheel was finally turning when they landed Eels forward Isaiah Papali’i and Koroisau early last year.
Apisai Koroisau. (Photo by Chris Lishman/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The long-suffering supporters then had to endure Papali’i giving a series of non-committal responses when asked repeatedly during the season about whether he would honour his deal at the Tigers.
His saga wasn’t sorted until he finally declared after Parramatta’s Grand Final loss that he would be heading to Concord.
But while he was giving Wests Tigers fans relief after the premiership decider, Koroisau gave them nothing but grief when he addressed the Penrith supporters at a rally the next day.
“This place has been incredible the last three years I’ve been here. It’s turned into a family for me. There’s so much young talent. To go out on a high like that, it’s pretty incredible, and I’ll probably do the same thing at the Tigers,” he added, before he burst into laughter at his own “wit”.
Club chair Lee Hagipantelis and CEO Justin Pascoe were immediately on the blower to Koroisau’s manager, Giancarlo Lombardo, and they said the matter was dealt with privately.
(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
Hagipantelis said at the time they weren’t “going to put a lot of stock in it”.
Returning Tigers coach Tim Sheens echoed those comments on radio last week when he said he didn’t put much credence in what the Fijian international said “with a few beers in you after a Grand Final”.
But making him captain sends a terrible message to the existing players and any prospective free agents down the track: You can abuse us and use us but as long as you play for us, we’ll be happy. We may even make you captain.
Wests Tigers are the NRL’s version of Martin in The Simpsons episode when he gets a pool in his backyard and suddenly everyone becomes his friend.
Salary cap space is the Tigers’ pool and Penrith speedster Charlie Staines, Knights prop David Klemmer and English forward John Bateman have been tempted to take a dip.
In the end, Martin’s pool broke due to his sudden popularity and he was caught with his pants down at the end of the episode as the reality dawned on him that his newfound friends didn’t actually want to be there.
The Tigers, who have the benefit of Wests’ enormous junior nursery at Campbelltown, shouldn’t have to bend over backwards to overpay for recruits.
They should be a club like the Panthers have morphed into – a production line of talented youngsters forming the nucleus of a team that competes for titles on a regular basis. Development, not recruitment, should be their huge advantage.
Have you ever taken a trip through the traffic congestion on Parramatta Road to get to Concord Oval in Sydney’s polluted inner-west? It’s not going to be a destination for players even though the Tigers have spent millions on their new Centre of Excellence.
In yet another NRL/Simpsons reference, what happens when every team has tarted up their training facilities and called it a Centre of Excellence – like when Shelbyville builds a mini-mall, Springfield then builds a bigger mini-mall.
The Tigers get a tick for ditching the ludicrous five-player captain model from last season when in reality, veteran prop James Tamou, pretty much remained their leader.
Now that he’s gone back to Townsville for one last giddy-up with the Cowboys, they need a strong leader to guide the wooden spooners back to respectability.
The Tigers polled the players and they overwhelmingly plumped for Koroisau.
That doesn’t mean the club’s head honchos should have yet again bent to the will of the players.
A club with strong leadership would have put a red line through the guy who they paid a squillion to recruit but laughed at the team’s finals prospects just a few weeks before he was due to report for duty.
Not to mention the fact that Koroisau is the kind of player who would break the rules before his NSW debut by sneaking a “visitor” into Origin camp on two occasions despite the biosecurity bubble that had been put in place during the pandemic.
Five-eighth Adam Doueihi is a regular first-grader, a local junior, is committed to the club and has the respect of his peers.
He’s a vocal leader, much more so than his halves partner Luke Brooks, and could be the link between the existing Tigers squad members from last year and the influx of new talent at the club.
Doueihi was not only the best player on the field on Sunday in the trial win over Canberra, it was clear he was the guy that the other players were looking towards as a leader.
(Photo by Speed Media/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The diehard Tigers fans have put up with way more than their fair share of under-achievement from a club which has the longest playoff drought in the NRL at 11 years and counting.
Not only that, they’ve only made the finals three times in their 23 years as a joint-venture. Aside from the 2005 lightning in a bottle run to the premiership, they have been the NRL’s biggest under-achievers.
After sacking Michael Maguire as coach mid-season and winning just four games to collect the wooden spoon, they have at least started turning the team around.
Sheens hasn’t coached in the NRL since he was sacked by the Tigers in 2012 but he has the pedigree of four premierships – only Wayne Bennett has more of the current crop.
And having Benji Marshall serving as an apprentice for two years before taking the reins is risky but worth the investment, especially with his long-time teammate Robbie Farah helping out as well.
There is at least a path now for them to get back to the finals but Koroisau should have been made to earn his stripes before being named Tigers captain.