Paul Kent: Luke Brooks-Kyle Flanagan swap deal the latest in Tigers Frankenstein’s monster tale

Wests Tigers are the Frankenstein’s monster of the NRL, a team completely assembled with the live corpses of other teams. Are they about to add another piece, PAUL KENT asks.

The scriptwriters slumped in their seats Thursday night, defeated by improbable reality.

None were able to comprehend how to turn what had just happened before them into something even somewhat believable.

If Thursday night’s ending between Wests and Gold Coast was sent to a Hollywood agent, the second act in the Michael Maguire story, it would be rejected as implausible.

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It was already hard enough writing about the hapless Tigers each week, and now this?

The Tigers are the Frankenstein’s monster of the NRL, a team now completely assembled with the live corpses of other teams. And here they were trying to find life where there is none, and yet they nearly found it.

Frankenstein’s monster of the NRL, the Wests Tigers. Art: Boo Bailey

For 79 of the 80 minutes they actually got it right.

They led 6-2 and all they needed was to defend one more tackle when, last play, the Titans steered a kick-it-and-hope bomb towards the post.

First fluke: it hit the upright.

Not to worry, Tigers five-eighth Jock Madden grabbed the ball to save the game.

Second fluke: Madden was hit in a tackle and somehow the tackler hit Madden’s arm — but missed contact with the ball, to avoid a knock-on — and knocked it loose.

Madden attempted to ground the loose ball but missed.

So, of course, the Titans touched down the ball after this, by simply placing a hand on it, to score and win the game.

And Frankenstein’s monster was left lifeless again.

It was a metaphor for their troubled times and nobody who was not a witness could believe it.

All week the narrative has been around Maguire and whether he can survive as Tigers coach.

Maguire has played it smart.

Instead of disappearing, he went on the front foot this week when the noise was greatest.

In every interview he repeated the support pledged to him from within after the arrival of Tim Sheens as the head of football.

It was a smart move from Maguire.

Nobody needs to mention the old “full support of the board” quote to realise the narrative that the coach is being told is often very different to the reality.

Faceless boards are dangerous. By quoting Sheens’s support, though, Maguire has put a face to his immediate future.

Still, behind the scenes much is happening. How much of it is true, how much will change, nobody knows.

It is now considered a mere formality that Luke Brooks will be released before even the midway point of the season, it goes, to join a rival club, although which one of two clubs it is remains to be thumb-wrestled over.

After Brooks twice had requests for a release to Newcastle rejected over the summer – Sheens declaring he was going nowhere – the Bulldogs have emerged as the latest interest.

The Bulldogs move is part of a bigger conspiracy.

It begins with Kyle Flanagan moving to the Tigers in a swap for Brooks, with a side deal done to square up the money.

Flanagan must have stolen somebody’s lunch money at Belmore. He has not got close to making a start with the NRL team, to the point he is yet to spend any time even at training working with new recruit Matt Burton in the halves.

Kyle Flanagan can’t catch a break at Belmore. Picture: Matt King/Getty Images

The Bulldogs would happily swap him for Brooks.

The right bower, however, is that Flanagan will land at Leichhardt as part of a package deal that includes his father Shane.

Keen readers will scoff that this has been mooted before but, just lately, it has gained some fresh heat. Some insist the deal is done and all that is left for Flanagan to take over as head coach is to wait for Maguire to be sacked.

The whispers gathered momentum last week but went quiet again this week, which is not always a positive for Maguire. It is always quietest just before the execution.

The narrative was going to be the familiar one.

Poor start to the season, the coach had lost the dressing room, then a fallout with coaching staff followed by players wanting out.

It is a common spin designed to make it look like the poor old board had no other choice but most fans, and certainly voting members, seem to fall for it each time.

If this truly was the case then it was all going to plan until the Tigers put in an effort Thursday night that suggested there might be a pulse left in Frankenstein yet.

Wests Tigers coach Michael Maguire.

Certainly, with the game dumbed down, which is the only way to describe what was a bludger of a game, they were able to push their energy into a physical effort rather than the mental effort required to think through a game plan and, with that, they nearly got away with it.

It might have revealed the secret that is the only way this team can be coached. Without talent, they need to excel in the effort areas.

Whether all this speculation is fair to Maguire or not seems to be irrelevant given the size of the push to remove him.

It has got to a point that some calling for Maguire’s removal are also defending him, even as they gently nudge him out the door.

They have gone to lengths to suggest it is no criticism of his coaching, and prove their point by making the curious observation that if he were coaching a good roster like Melbourne, where he was an assistant coach, or another like he inherited at Souths, then they have no doubt he would again find success.

The irony is that if Maguire was good enough to coach the Storm, but not the Tigers, could that suggest the Tigers might not have the right players, but do have the right coach?

Ah, but he can’t recruit, they’ll say.

This suggests the troubles at the Tigers could go deeper than Maguire, and to the club’s inability to recruit and develop.

Contributing to that is the weak salary cap policing combined with a distorted third-party system which provides significant benefit for some clubs over others.

Somehow, all 16 teams have the same money to spend on players yet year after year the top half-dozen clubs remain basically the same, even after some go through generational change in players and even coaches and football staff.

Maguire is fighting all that, against the backdrop of a push to oust him as coach because he somehow remains the obstacle between the club, its players, and success.

It’s enough to make you slump in defeat at the keyboard.

And it might remain the greatest fiction of all, yet nobody can find the words to say it.

BIG-TALKING KAMBOSOS A MAIN EVENT

George Kambosos is a polarising figure in the boxing game but, and they can say what they like about him, he knows how to sell himself.

No fighter makes any money unless people hear the drumbeats coming first, something Kambosos knows too well.

So Kambosos (20-0) has talked up his world title defence against American Devin Haney (27-0) by — in a massive fail for understatement — claiming it will be the biggest fight in Australian history.

When the time arrived for Friday’s official announcement Kambosos, the WBA, WBO, IBF and Ring magazine lightweight champion, turned up with tinted sunglasses and diamond studded earrings big enough to stub your toe on.

You’ve got to love his enthusiasm, although he might have overshot the runway a tad.

George Kambosos at Marvel Stadium on Friday. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Ian Currie

No fight on Australian soil was talked about in the past 50 years like Jeff Fenech’s rematch with Azumah Nelson while, from a crowd point of view, Kambosos will be hard-pressed getting as many through the gate as when Kostya Tszyu fought Jesse James Leija in front of 28,000 in the same venue 19 years ago.

Thankfully, though, the professionals got involved on Friday and Eddie Maguire was brought in to add some pizzazz while the Kambosos-Haney fight was reworked to be described as the biggest fight in Australia “this century”.

With all those belts on offer, as well as Haney’s WBC title, it is hard to argue.

It will be a massive fight for broadcaster Main Event, where I have a side gig running off former world champ Barry Michael, and Kambosos has joined the stable.

Alongside Kambosos, Main Event has all the country’s biggest fighters, the likes of Tim Tszyu, Harry Garside, Justis Huni, Jai Opetaia, Sam Goodman, Issac Hardman and Nikita Tszyu. It even has the country’s best footballer turned boxer, Paul Gallen.

Originally published as Paul Kent: Luke Brooks-Kyle Flanagan swap deal the latest in Tigers Frankenstein’s monster tale