‘It is awful’: Tyrone Peachey slammed for petulant act as Wests Tigers implode

It looks like a case of new year, same old Wests Tigers as Tyrone Peachey summed up the club’s headspace with a mind-boggling brain snap.

Tyrone Peachey couldn't help himself.

Tyrone Peachey has come under fire for a brain snap that saw him sin-binned during Wests Tigers’ dismal loss to Newcastle on Sunday.

The Knights thrashed the joint-venture club 26-4 as Michael Maguire’s men failed to get into the game at all, making a whopping 16 errors as they completed just 66 per cent of their sets.

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With eight minutes left in the first half Peachey — one of the Tigers’ five co-captains — pushed and jostled with Jake Clifford as the Newcastle five-eighth tried to play-the-ball, then slapped the ball out of hooker Chris Randall’s hands. Referee Ben Cummins immediately sent the utility from the field for 10 minutes.

Brisbane legend Corey Parker was scathing of Peachey’s petulant act.

“It is frustrating, it is so frustrating for Tigers fans to sit there and watch,” Parker told Fox League. “This is their captain, Tyrone Peachey is their captain and he comes up with one of the dumbest plays to get his team 10 in the bin.

“Now this is a guy that when you put as captain you want your teammates to follow, you want him to lead, you want him to set an example.

“If this is the example that the Wests Tigers captain is setting they are in for an enormously long year. It is awful, awful from what we have seen of the Tigers in the opening 40 minutes and I am sure if they don’t get a spray then they pretty well should.

“It has been terrible, they are lucky to be in the game.”

Penrith legend Greg Alexander was also dumbfounded. “What’s he doing?” he said in commentary for Fox League.

The moment didn’t do anything to kick the Tigers into gear, as they continued an error-strewn performance up until the final whistle.

What was Tyrone Peachey thinking? Photo: Fox Sports/Kayo.

Ben Cummins sent Peachey straight to the bin. Photo: NRL Imagery

Tigers legend Benji Marshall was another who laid the boot into his former team.

“Really terrible,” Marshall said on Fox League. “From an effort point of view, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t first-grade standard.”

Coach Maguire tried to remain upbeat despite the demoralising loss — the Tigers’ second in a row after going down to Melbourne in Round One.

“It was disappointing,” Maguire said in his post-match press conference.

“We put it upon ourselves right at the start of the game – the defence side of things was lacking at the start. It rolled into poor completions and you put pressure on yourself.

“What’s frustrating is I know what this group is capable of, to be honest. We’ve shown it, we’ve said what we want to do, but we need to own our own areas of our game and make sure the team has the success is build pressure.

“We’ll have a look at how we played and what we need to do.

“We didn’t put any pressure on the opposition whatsoever – if you’re going to do that, you put it upon yourself. We didn’t get kicks to corners and didn’t have the same D-line. We’ve got to go to our style of how we want to play.

“To build pressure on any opposition is always difficult, but you’ve got to be able to win that back. Our game plan is very simple and the boys can execute that – we’ve shown that.

“They are all trying out there, I see that every single day. The boys know what we need to do and there’s a big belief around how we want to play the game.”

Originally published as ‘It is awful’: Tyrone Peachey slammed for petulant act as Wests Tigers implode