NRL 2020: James Tamou contract talks could make or break Wests Tigers | Locker Room
It’s been a brutal time for Wests Tigers. But with James Tamou poised to declare if he’s joining the Wests Tigers next year – it could be the signing that changes the perception of the club forever.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
We’re about to discover how hard it is to remove the mud at the Wests Tigers.
By putting pen to paper with the Tigers in the next few days, former Test and NSW Origin and current Penrith prop James Tamou could help wipe clean the muck of perception.
Needless to say, it’s a tense time ahead for a club that no matter the season, the coach, the chair or the CEO, it just can’t get out of its own way.
Kayo is your ticket to the 2020 NRL Telstra Premiership. Every game of every round Live & On-Demand with no-ad breaks during play. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >
NRL NEWS
Nofoaluma’s bold finals football declaration
Kent: It’s time for Tigers to harden up
He’s second in try assists but Benji’s time is still up
If you’re a frustrated Tigers fan, you can be comforted by the fact Tamou has been in promising negotiations with the club.
Both the Tigers and Tamou’s current club, the Panthers, expect the 31-year-old to decide on his future this week.
Tamou represents the big fish the Tigers, despite using every jig, lure and hook, have failed to net in recent times.
A premiership winner, experienced and just an all-round decent family man, Tamou is a player the Tigers can use as a genuine figurehead of their pack.
Melbourne and NSW State of Origin winger Josh Addo-Carr is also in the final stages of deciding to come back to the Tigers — albeit as a fullback.
He has the Tigers offer in his email and only needs to settle on the final contract terms. Again, another big fish.
They are two players in a reduced roster of 26 — each position even more crucial.
For the Tigers’ rot to stop, it starts with their recruitment.
The duo represent a renewed confidence at Wests.
They also represent something few on the outside — and clearly given their nine-year finals absence — within the walls at Concord boast: belief.
To sign Tamou and Addo-Carr is to say that two elite players believe in the club. It’s huge.
Tigers chair Lee Hagipantelis is deeply passionate about the club but he’s not blinded by his love either. He knows if the Tigers are to make it back to the finals, they have to confront their own issues within.
For the principal of Brydens Lawyers, that’s belief.
He sees it in the leading clubs and he says the Tigers need to replicate it.
The mentality of the chair will irk a few Tigers fans, but here’s a newsflash: what the Tigers have been doing isn’t working, so Hagipantelis is willing to adopt a model that does.
“There has been a perception that the Wests Tigers have not been successful because there has not been that belief in ourselves,” Hagipantelis says.
“You look at those clubs who have enjoyed sustained success, the Roosters and Melbourne, and you look at them as a model, and you think ‘what are they doing right, what are they doing differently to us?’
“And you need to model yourself on them.
“Stability at the front office, great recruitment and a belief in what they’re doing — we need to create that here.
“This season, again to not achieve what we set out for, it’s unacceptable.
“That level of mediocrity has entrenched itself and unless we start doing things drastically different, it’s going to remain the same.
“We do not accept that mediocrity as being our standards.”
Publicly, the Tigers have hitched their sail to coach Michael Maguire’s mast.
The playing group need to know that while they may have won battles with the coach in the past, they won’t win the war any time soon.
It’s not that Maguire is without flaw as a coach either — it’s just simple logic.
Are the Tigers really going to pay out another coach? His sacking would amount to six coaches in seven years.
And further, are they going to sack their coach given the lack of options available — evident in the Dragons struggle to replace Paul McGregor?
No.
What the Tigers are going to do is wait until the season is over, sit Maguire down with a pen and extend his contract beyond his current deal, which expires at the end of 2021.
At that point, Maguire will need to deliver results.
Again, the key to the Tigers revival is recruitment, and if the club has struggled to sign the likes of Latrell Mitchell, Matt Moylan, Kurt Capewell and AJ Brimson in the past, what chance are they of attracting players if they can’t tell their target who the coach will be in year two, three or four of their contract. The Dragons’ missing out on Storm forward Christian Welch last week is a perfect example of that.
Aside from stability at coach level, what the Tigers need to promise Tamou, Addo-Carr and any other player target, is the way the club failed miserably on Tuesday in managing a club icon in Benji Marshall out the door, will never happen again.
Hagipantelis admits the extraction of Marshall, who learned of his exit from the club at the end of the season via a newspaper leak was “embarrassing”, ”disappointing” and ”disgraceful”.
“If anyone represents what the Tigers have achieved since the joint venture commenced in 2000, it’s Benji Marshall,’’ Hagipantelis said.
“That’s not the way anyone wanted it to happen.’’
That’s the lesson for the Tigers. Because you just know it wouldn’t have happened at the Storm or Roosters.
Originally published as NRL 2020: James Tamou contract talks could make or break Wests Tigers | Locker Room