Jason Taylor’s sacking explained

WESTS Tigers have sensationally sacked coach Jason Taylor because of a potential doomsday that would have shattered the club.

Is Taylor a dead man walking?

THE Wests Tigers have confirmed the sacking of coach Jason Taylor.

Following back-to-back thumpings at the hands of Canberra and Penrith, the club’s board decided to get rid of Taylor on Monday, effective immediately.

“Our position has always been to make sure that the head coach’s contract is tied to performance and that hasn’t changed,” Tigers chair Marina Go said in a statement. “We are committed to building a side that will be in a position to win NRL premierships and believe that this decision is the correct one for the future of the club.

“This is a challenging time for the club and Jason and we ask that we are given time to work through this process with Jason.”

Assistant coach Andrew Webster will fill Taylor’s position in the interim, though there are several other long term options including former Tiger Todd Payten and ex-Warriors mentor Ivan Cleary.

Despite boasting one of the most talented spines in the competition, the joint-venture club has struggled at the start of 2017. The signs were promising after a first-up 34-18 win over Souths, but consecutive losses since then put the heat on Taylor.

Penrith smashed the Tigers 36-2 in Campbelltown before the Raiders heaped even more misery on the team with a 46-6 demolition job in Canberra on Sunday.

Halfback Luke Brooks and five-eighth Mitchell Moses are two of the most promising playmakers in the game although Moses has shot past his halves partner Brooks, whose development has stalled since a breakout 2014.

Fullback James Tedesco made his State of Origin debut last year and looks likely to retain his sky blue jersey in 2017, while captain Aaron Woods — a NSW and Australian representative — is a massive metre eater who leads the forward pack.

These players form the Tigers’ “Big Four” and are all off contract at season’s end. Tigers powerbrokers are aware the chance of long-term success hinges on keeping them at Concord and they need to keep them happy.

Taylor’s contract was also due to expire at the end of 2017 and Woods went on record saying he would delay putting pen to paper until he knew who was in charge next year. Such a move suggests he wasn’t entirely comfortable re-signing while Taylor was at the helm.

Luke Brooks and Mitchell Moses are the future for the Tigers if they choose to stay.

Speaking on the Triple M Grill Team on Monday before news of Taylor’s departure broke, NRL legends Matthew Johns and Mark Geyer speculated about what the contract situation meant for the club and Taylor.

“The potential loss of Tedesco, Woods, Moses and Brooks would be catastrophic for the Tigers, but the more (games) they lose the more likely it appears,” Johns said.

“If the Tigers go ahead and sign Jason Taylor now, extend him for three years, those four players either sign or they turn on their heels and walk away. Now, if I’m running the club, I go and sit down with those four players and go, ‘Right.’

“Unfortunately you don’t want the players to have all the power but in this situation they appear to have the club snookered. So you would say to them, ‘We need you guys, what do you want?’

“This is the difficulty of the situation, it’s tough on the club because ... the more they lose, the less likely it appears that they (the Big Four) will stay, but they’re the blokes who can control that.”

The Tigers became the first team to concede 100 points this season and after failing to make the finals five years running, the club can’t tolerate another abysmal campaign. Mark Geyer said it was up to the Big Four to change the Tigers’ fortunes around and hoped Taylor wouldn’t be made a scapegoat for the underperforming outfit.

“The four blokes who are up for contract, their four best players, this has impacted them dramatically, this contract saga,” Geyer said. “Do I think Jason Taylor is the right man for the job? Probably. How many times are we going to see teams chopping and changing?

“You’d think these younger guys ... would be saying, ‘This is my team, I want to win more than anything, if we win the better I look.’”

Tedesco is one of the most exciting players in the game.

Taylor invested in youth.

The most intriguing subplot to Taylor’s demise is the Robbie Farah saga that weighed heavily on the club last year. Taylor didn’t have Farah in his best 17 and dropped him to reserve grade, reportedly believing he had too much of an influence on games and froze out the likes of Brooks, Moses and Tedesco.

Farah is a multidimensional hooker who always has the option of passing, running or kicking. Taylor wanted a dummy-half who would shovel the ball out to the halves rather than take the initiative because he wanted Brooks, Moses and Tedesco to have greater control over how the team played in attack.

It was Taylor or Farah, and Taylor won. Despite plenty of fans resenting how the club legend was shafted, the board backed its under-siege coach and essentially put his wishes ahead of Farah’s, keeping him on board for 2017.

Farah couldn’t work with Taylor and moved to South Sydney, where he’s just played his 250th NRL game.

How would @robbiefarah be feeling right now?!

— Neroli Meadows (@Neroli_M_FOX) March 20, 2017

But as the axe fell on Taylor, it would appear the very players he tried to protect and develop by dumping Farah are the ones responsible for his downfall. The Daily Telegraph’s Phil Rothfield reported although the players “do not dislike Taylor”, they “feel they need new direction to become better players and win a premiership at the Wests Tigers”.

That suggests their input will have gone a way towards ending Taylor’s reign, particularly given the club wants to appease them to keep them in the orange in black.

That would make Taylor’s gamble to effectively end Farah’s time at Wests a blunder of gigantic proportions.

No doubt when Taylor decided the 33-year-old rake didn’t feature in his future plans, he was expecting to be given more than three games to prove he’d made the right call. But now Taylor is out the door and his year-long battle with Farah was all for nothing.

Will Robbie Farah enjoy the last laugh?