Opinion
Tim Sheens’ coaching swing from the rafters in playing Adam Doueihi at fullback and selecting Brandon Wakeham at five-eighth against the Storm on Friday night is representative of the chaos that is the Wests Tigers.
It reeks of desperation early in the season, something that a team so ordinary for so long hardly needs.
Combined with a few interesting coaching calls made by the 72-year-old in last Sunday’s loss to the Bulldogs at Belmore, there seems to be a distinct lack of certainty or any notion of staying the course when it comes to the way Sheens is approaching things early in his rescue mission.
Frankly, most would have though the veteran coach with more than 750 games of experience had been employed to do exactly the opposite, charting a successful map to success, having it in place by the opening round and being patient with its application and the time it might take to see sustainable results.
Yet as the coach refuses to justify his sometimes controversial decisions in public and now makes a crucial change to his spine for Round 4, the Tigers look as much of a mess as they have been for a period that fans of other clubs now simply see as the norm.
While this is just an opinion – and a viewpoint shared by plenty looking from the outside in, the statistics support the ‘dog’s breakfast’ nature of the Tigers’ performances in 2023. The data is frightful, hard to explain and from a coaching perspective, making it incredibly difficult to know exactly where to begin in terms of starting all-over again after what has been a horror 0-3 start.
Tim Sheens. (Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)
Many a coach would be pleased with some of the numbers Sheens’ troops have produced across the opening three rounds. With 600 total runs, Wests rank first in the competition, and their subsequent 5674 run metres is the second highest.
The Tigers have parlayed that possession into 108 tackle breaks to sit second in the NRL and are equal top with the Eels when it comes to offloads, managing 45 after just three matches.
One could easily be fooled by the numbers above and wonder precisely where the statistical train-wreck actually begins. However, considering their 0-3 start to the 2023 season, there must obviously be data that derails any good work done in a few areas.
And here is that data, reflective of the sheer chasm between a few things the Tigers do well and the areas where they are simply not in the contest at an NRL standard. It is that chasm that produces the drastic selection decisions, causes frosty coach reactions at press conferences and has fans disheartened and wondering if the approach is as reckless and disorganised as it seems.
In a nutshell, the Tigers are all over the place.
Whilst running the ball plenty of times, clocking up decent metres, busting tackles frequently and defending well enough to sit a respectable 15th in ineffective tackles, the third best in the league, Wests could also not do a few other things any worse.
A completion rate of 68 per cent will lose a team all bar the oddest of NRL fixtures, as will an average of nearly 33 missed tackles per match.
Combine those two alarming realities with the whopping 45 handling errors that place the Tigers at the top of the pops in that statistical category and the true pain lived by the sad souls still loyal to the club becomes tangible.
It is difficult to recall a team so statistically divergent. On the one hand, with 51 per cent of possession across the opening three rounds of the season and enough ball to tally more than the 44 paltry points scored thus far, there might seem to be hope.
However, with seemingly no concerted effort to control sets of six, address handling and apply the necessary patience that leads to effective game management, the Tigers resemble a headless chook; free range, wild and without an over-arching discipline that is required at the top level.
Luke Brooks. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
It is far too simple to suggest that once the ball is controlled and the errors eliminated, the team will start winning and their form will be reversed.
Things are never that simple in rugby league and with the major shake-up made at the selection table on Tuesday, that potentially seems even less likely in the short term.
Whether viewed as a statistical train-wreck, a basket case or simply a club without a concise and clear coaching plan and strategy, Wests Tigers look set for another season of misery, which is something the experience of Tim Sheens was supposed to prevent.
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