Wests Tigers have fallen into their same old trap again | Crawley Files
Here we are again, heading into the back end of another season and the NRL’s most frustrating club are on the brink of missing the finals for the ninth straight year. How has this happened again?
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Wests Tigers are the rugby league version of a parachute. Every year they just find a way to slowly let their fans down.
Here we are again, heading into the back-end of another season and the NRL’s most frustrating club are on the brink of missing the finals for the ninth straight year.
Currently ninth on the ladder — what a surprise (not) — it will continue the game’s longest play-offs drought. But the really scary thing is if they don’t upset the injury-ravaged Sydney Roosters on Saturday, there is every chance the Tigers won’t win another game this year.
However fanciful it may seem that they can upset the premiers, judging by last week’s one-point win over last-placed Canterbury, what’s to follow is the finish from hell.
After the Roosters, they take on Penrith followed by Manly (who will have Tom Trbojevic back by then), South Sydney, Melbourne and Parramatta.
The Tigers will start outsiders in all those games.
It would be a disaster if they finish lower than the ninth they came last year but it seems odds-on to happen.
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GROUNDHOG DAY
Every year it’s the same sorry story.
The Tigers promise so much but it ends in broken dreams.
In January, chief executive Justin Pascoe spoke with tremendous positivity when he addressed the club’s website.
The Tigers had just signed the Leilua brothers, Joey and Luciano, and picked up Zane Musgrove along with Adam Doueihi, and Harry Grant was coming.
They had also extended the contracts of Alex Twal and Tommy Talau, and there was genuine excitement when Pascoe explained how the Tigers had been “patient” and “strategic” in rebuilding their roster, getting their salary cap back in shape.
He claimed they’d set themselves up as a “destination club, where players and also staff want to come”.
“Like the other 15 clubs, our goal and aspiration is very simple: we are here to win the premiership,” Pascoe said.
But fast forward seven months and it’s Groundhog Day.
What worries me even more is that only last week a different story came out which seemed to suggest more pain was to come next year — with only $300,000 to spend if they fail in a bid to offload Josh Reynolds, Luke Brooks, Russell Packer and Moses Mbye.
Perhaps it was to prepare fans for the inevitable. But surely the fans must be fed up with the excuses.
THE BLAME GAME
As good a job as Ivan Cleary is doing with Penrith, he left a salary cap nightmare for Michael Maguire to clean up at Wests Tigers.
Even so, I’m not so sure the Tigers spent wisely this year.
The signing of Joey Leilua in particular, was a brain explosion waiting to happen — and they paid massive money to get him from Canberra. And as solid as young Doueihi is, he is hardly a steal on $600,000-plus a year.
Now there’s talk they want to try and get Josh Addo-Carr by apparently throwing the lure that he can play fullback, which was the same sell for Doueihi. If this is the case, where’s the strategy?
Addo-Carr has proved himself a terrific winger, but it would be a huge gamble to try and turn him into a fullback now. It just smacks of another quick fix, exactly what they blame Cleary for doing.
Yet Tigers fans must get so frustrated watching a young superstar like Ryan Papenhuyzen emerge at Melbourne knowing they had him but lost him. Just as they lost James Tedesco, Mitchell Moses, Aaron Woods, Andrew Fifita and the rest of them over the years.
SECURE THE FUTURE
It’s not as if the Tigers can’t produce talent, they just need to work out how to keep the right ones.
This is where as a club they really need to clean up their act because I just continue to see too many top kids coming out of what should be their western Sydney region and heading to other NRL clubs.
At least they appear to have learned something when it comes to the age of recruits – with their three most recent in Shawn Blore (Panthers), Asu Kepaoa (Roosters) and Stefano Utoikamanu (Eels) all starting their careers.
Young hooker Jake Simpkin is another exciting prospect, while Talau could be special. While there’s plenty of talent among their forwards, it could be at least two years before they’re anywhere near reaching their full potential.
BENJI’S FUTURE?
The retirement of Chris Lawrence this week was sad but to his credit the veteran conceded his time was up.
Now the question is whether Benji Marshall can/should go another year, and if he doesn’t who can fill the void?
If Reynolds stays it will most likely be between him and Billy Walters to partner Brooks, although there has been a lot of expectation on former Australian Schoolboy Jock Madden for some time.
For whatever reason, Maguire has been reluctant to give the kid a go. Maguire has copped his fair share of criticism in recent weeks for swapping and changing his side too much.
But maybe over the closing six weeks it might be worth seeing if Madden is ready for NRL level.
What’s to lose given the finals look gone for another year?
COACH UNDER PRESSURE
For all the knocks that Maguire is too tough, the last thing this club needs is another change of coach.
I still think resurrecting the Tigers will be Maguire’s toughest coaching job.
While he won a premiership at Souths, a lot of the heavy lifting was done before he arrived in respect to building the roster by Shane Richardson and Johnny Lang, along with Russell Crowe’s influence.
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Maguire took over a tremendous squad that included Greg Inglis and Sam Burgess, John Sutton and young guns Adam Reynolds and Luke Keary.
Now it’s Maguire’s turn to try and make the Tigers that “destination club” Pascoe spoke about.
But after watching another year disappear with still no clear direction, it must be especially frustrating for their long-suffering fans.
SAINT DEAN OF KOGARAH READY FOR COACHING CRUSADE
Wayne Bennett says Dean Young is ready to take over from Paul McGregor permanently.
Ahead of Young’s first game in charge when St George Illawarra takes on Brisbane at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night, Bennett vouched for Young with a respect and admiration I have rarely heard him give anyone.
Bennett once told me Young was his “hero” as a player. On the day Young retired in 2012, Bennett predicted he would make it as an NRL coach as much for his brains as his commitment.
“You heard it here first,” Bennett said at the time.
Now the day has arrived, Bennett has no doubt Young is ready.
“Definitely, he has done his apprenticeship,” Bennett said.
Asked if Young would handle the pressure given all that had happened under McGregor, Bennett said: “He’s made for it.”
While plenty of Dragons fans might be concerned about the club potentially going down the same track and employing from within, like they did with McGregor and previously Steve Price, Bennett reckons Young’s greatest strength is his love and passion for the club — and that should not be dismissed.
“I’ll tell you one thing they will do, the players will play for him,” Bennett said.
“It is a tough gig (coaching the Dragons) but it is not a tough gig for him. He was such a courageous player, unbelievable.
“And he is a guy you can’t help but like and you know he is committed and you know he cares. And he has a great sense of humour that people don’t see.”
A sense of humour? He comes across as a serious man.
“No, we used to have a gee-up Monday or whatever we called it and he was always front and centre sending guys up,” Bennett said.
“It is still one of the most endearing moments of my coaching career watching him and his dad (Craig) together after that grand final.
“They were really tough men and were crying their eyes out with sheer pride. It was a wonderful time.”
TOOVS WEIGHS IN ON NRL TOUGHNESS
Joel Thompson’s courage to play almost an entire match with his tongue almost torn in two once again highlights how incredibly tough these NRL players are.
The Manly backrower suffered such a nasty gash after an accidental head collision with Newcastle’s Kurt Mann in the fourth minute last Sunday that went so deep it actually cut an artery.
It meant the only fluid Thompson could drink for the entire match was literally his own blood, not even water.
But it was interesting having a conversation with former Manly champion Geoff Toovey about it during the week.
As we all know, Toovs was arguably the toughest player pound-for-pound to ever pull on a boot.
So I asked him which injury would he least like to play with if he had to choose between Thompson’s cut tongue, Cooper Cronk’s broken shoulder or Sam Burgess’s fractured cheekbone.
Toovs reckoned the cheekbone would be the hardest because of the fear of what could potentially happen, physically and mentally.
Toovs earned the right to comment given he suffered busted shoulders and a broken jaw during his career, and famously had his head trampled by Adam “Mad Dog” MacDougall.
CRUSHER CRACKDOWN WAY TO GO
The NRL should be congratulated for finally getting tough on dangerous crusher tackles.
If it ends up costing a few players a short stint on the sidelines in the finals countdown but potentially saves some poor bugger from breaking his neck then so be it.
Previously a grade one charge didn’t even warrant a one-match suspension if the player copped the early guilty plea.
Now at least it will be a one-game ban that hopefully makes players reconsider using the technique.
It’s a nonsense argument to suggest players backing into a tackle have caused twice as many crusher tackles this year.