Based on that stinging assessment, perhaps the board are doing the right thing by not to offer an extension yet. My concern in not offering Madge an extension is that his current contract expires at the end of this year and he could be snapped up by Melbourne for 2022 with Bellamy acting as coaching director with Smith as an assistant coach. I don't want to end up losing a fourth coach after roughly two years only to have another coach come in and start another rebuild. Madge is demonstrating he's learning from his mistakes and while it's true we've regressed on paper, personally I put a lot of the regression in defence and toughness down to the loss of Robbie Farah.
Farah came back to the Tigers in Ivan's second year, which was heading downhill fast. Before Farah arrived, the side had only manged to win two games from their last nine and those wins were against trash tier teams like the Bulldogs and Cowboys, who funnily enough still aren't in good shape. Farah comes back, arrests the slide and we finish 9th.
Then the first year Madge is in charge and we're on track for a finals spot, we lose two matches on the trot because both times we lose our first choice hooker to season ending injuries. Despite those loses, we were still on track for a finals spot until we also lost our first choice fullback. After that happened, whatever slim hope we had of beating a premiership threat like Souths went out the window.
So it comes as no surprise to me without Farah there to complement Marshall and to stiffen up our defence in the middle that we've gone backwards. Farah retiring also points to something else about our roster. There were a lot of aging players in it at the start of the year. Marshall, Lawrence, McQueen, Packer, Reynolds, Taylor and Thompson are 30 or above. None of these players will be there next year apart from Packer and Reynolds who were signed to huge contracts by Cleary. Madge has learned that we can't continue to rely on aging players and expect them to deliver prermierships.
That's the approach he's taken to recruitment as well. The forwards he recruited earlier like Utoikamanu and Blore are much younger than any player being released. He may have missed out on the 19yr old Saab when he let the 30yr old Thompson go, he replaced him with the 20yr old Kepaoa. While we're on wingers, our depth definitely isn't great there, but that hasn't stopped Madge from dumping Jennings. He hasn't played since round six and won't be offered another contract.
Madge has also identified other glaring holes, like how he gave Mbye a shot at demonstrating he was the game breaking fullback he was paid to be before going to market after Mbye showed he didn't cut it. The opinions are mixed on whether fullback is Doueihi's best position, but after Marshall went down in the last game of season, he showed he could make a handy partner for Brooks next year.
Madge also fixed our woeful hooker depth which has been a shambles since Taylor forced Farah out. He signed Walters and started a succession plan by landing young Simpkin. He also saw how rushing to sign a fullback didn't quite work out, so he was more patient and landed Harry Grant, who was our best player of the season. He's seen our lack of an experienced forward leader and snapped up Tamou. Fullback is still a worry, but that's always been an issue when we haven't had Hodgson or Tedesco and we are still in the running to get Josh Addo-Carr.
These are the reasons why I continue to support Madge and I think next year will demonstrate that he's laid the groundwork for success despite being hamstrung by almost a third of the cap taken up by a handful of underperforming and underwhelming players. If for some reason he's not our coach for 2022, any incoming coach won't have much to whinge about.