The last thing the Wests Tigers need is another stadium - so why are they trying to build one in Liverpool?

Even when there’s no rugby league on, the Wests Tigers will find a way of making themselves the centre of attention.

Their commitment to the bit of being the NRL’s favourite basket case continued on Thursday night, with two stories aired on Nine News – near back-to-back – that perfectly summed up the state of the club, and the potential for that state to persist long into the future.

First, among the regular news stories, there was the revelation that they are to pitch for a part in a new 20,000 seater stadium in Liverpool, followed by the sports, which went straight into the political wrangling that has seen chairman Lee Hagipantelis’ position under threat despite him only being returned to the job less than a week ago.

One wonders what fans are meant to make of a club that simultaneously wants to move grounds – a fairly important undertaking – but also can’t decide who is meant to be in charge. 

Moreover, one wonders why the Wests Tigers think they need a new stadium given that they have used four Sydney venues in four years and recently announced, to wide appreciation, that they are to can their peripatetic playing policy in favour of sticking to Leichhardt Oval, their spiritual home, and Campbelltown, where the bulk of their playing base comes from.

Politicians in NSW love nothing more than a stadium and, they might well decide that Liverpool needs one given the huge growth in population in the area.

Given the lack of proximity to any other sporting club in the area, it’s possible that they see the Wests Tigers as their best option to have a tenant. 

The Canterbury Bulldogs are perhaps closest – at least the Bankstown bit of them – but are locked into Accor Stadium for the foreseeable. Their leagues club also own a tract of land in the area and could potentially sell it at a huge profit to allow for a venue to be built rather than using Liverpool as a base.

We should park the idea that Sydney absolutely does not need more stadiums – and all their carbon – and instead discuss why on earth the Tigers need a third home venue.

Fans certainly aren’t clamouring for it.

“Any attempt to move Wests Tigers home ground to Liverpool will be met with hard resistance from supporters,” said Inner West Council mayor and Tigers fan Darcy Byrne. “It’s not what the fans want, and there is no mandate to propose it.”

He would say that, given he’s pushing for Leichhardt Oval to get a revamp, but his point does stand. Tigers fans already have to jockey between two disparate parts on Sydney’s map to follow their side, with very little that links the two sides beyond the club itself.

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

The biggest problem they face – well, aside from being rubbish at football, which will probably change eventually – is that they have never decided who they are for.

The Dragons, a similarly clunky joint venture, have thrown their lot in with the Illawarra side, predominantly training there, with most of their players living in the area. 

New coach Shane Flanagan has committed to moving some aspects of the club back to Kogarah, but in practice, they threw their lot in with the Steelers long ago.

The Tigers, however, remain half-pregnant. They just opened a new Centre of Excellence at Concord – nothing wrong with that – and committed to splitting their games between Campbelltown and Leichhardt, which at least ended the farce of playing at Homebush and Parramatta, two grounds indelibly linked with other teams.

The split is currently five and five, but realistically, it should probably be seven to Campbelltown and three to the Inner West. Moreover, they should be looking at who they face where, as well as when. 

Then again, they’ve not won there since June 2020, an eight-game streak, so perhaps they would do well to stay away.

Across the last two years since fans returned following Covid, Macarthur fans have seen Manly twice, but out of Sydney opposition on all other occasions. The likes of Penrith, Parramatta, St George Illawarra, Canterbury and Souths – have all been elsewhere.

The Dogs last visited in 2019, the Panthers in 2017, the Dragons in 2015, the Eels in 2012 and Souths, who are thought to be the next best supported team in the region, have never played there in the 21st century.

Canterbury have played at Leichhardt – further from their fans – since they last played in Campbelltown, as have Parra, Penrith and Souths, though theirs was a behind-closed-doors game during Covid.

There’s an argument that moving fixtures to bigger stadiums helps get more fans in, but only one Wests Tigers home game against Souths has had an attendance higher than the capacity in Leumeah in the last decade, and they’ve not cracked Campbelltown’s 17,500 limit against the Dogs since 2015.

Short-changed southwest fans have also got their Tigers fix in clusters, with two games in June 2023.

Indeed, between the Tigers’ last game in mid-June and Macarthur’s AFC Cup tie against the wonderfully-named Dynamic Herb Cefu of the Philippines this Thursday passed, there wasn’t a single elite sporting event there at all. 

(Photo by Jenny Evans/Getty Images)

Even their NRLW fixture, scheduled for mid-September, had to be moved because of bushfire smoke. 

Part of that absence was due to the FIFA Women’s World Cup, but the years before that weren’t. In 2022, they got three games in 2022 in March, then June, then August, with months between events. In terms of building a fanbase with a culture of going to games, good luck. 

For the Tigers, this is the biggest threat. Macarthur FC are throwing money at the region and play there all the time, with a commitment to that area and that area only. 

As much as the region is rusted-on rugby league country at the moment, the projected population growth is not necessarily from the demographics that it once was, with more recent migrants with no tradition of the sport – but a clear understanding of soccer. 

Over half of the population were both abroad, and the largest constituent group from a rugby-playing nation was 2% from Fiji, a long way behind Southeast Asian nations, Arab nations, South America and China. It’s not a given that these people will be rugby league fans at all, let alone follow the Wests Tigers.

Plenty has been written about the pathways, and the kids that the Tigers lose to other clubs from what should be their heartlands. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t have the demographic advantages that Penrith and Parramatta have, or indeed, the Warriors or Broncos.

One need only look at Manly, 50km away, to see how many kids the area produces. Currently, however, none of these kids grow up wanting to play for the Tigers, and that comes down to the other side of the game, the off-field.

Leichhardt is the past and Campbelltown, just like it was in 2000, is the future. Liverpool should not even enter into the thinking at the club. But, like everything else with the Tigers, it’s an argument being had out in public, with stakeholders pulling in every direction. 

Until that part changes, they’ll never change the orientation of the club, and until the orientation changes, they’ll never be successful.