A crisis of identity: The real tales from Tiger town
By Michael Chammas
September 4, 2021
The Wests Tigers have begun an internal review of another failed season resulting in a record 10th straight year without finals football. The findings will have major ramifications for the club’s future.
Attention in the coming weeks will inevitably turn to coach Michael Maguire’s position at the club, but it is impossible to ignore the consequences of key decisions dating back to the club’s establishment in 1999.
The Herald has spoken to 30 people who have been involved with the club in an attempt to answer the question of how a team that should be an NRL powerhouse has instead spent a decade in the wilderness.
“I would have loved to coach the Tigers,” seven-time premiership-winning coach Wayne Bennett tells the Herald when asked why he turned down an approach from the club following Ivan Cleary’s sudden departure at the end of 2018.
“The offer was good. The money was great. There wasn’t a drama. It’s the Wests Tigers – everyone likes them. Robbie Farah and Benji Marshall were icons of that club.
“When I first came into coaching, Balmain was a top club with Blocker (Steve Roach) and Benny Elias. I always respected those guys and what they built.”
In referencing two Balmain greats, Bennett unwittingly raises two key questions about the club: have the Wests Tigers developed an identity of their own?
And if that identity is founded on “icons” such as Marshall and Farah, what happens to the Tigers’ sense of themselves when those players are no longer around?
They are questions that many believe are at the heart of the Wests Tigers all-too-familiar current malaise.
A CRISIS OF IDENTITY
For a time, the Wests Tigers had an identity. Not Balmain. Not Western Suburbs. The Wests Tigers.
Under the coaching of Tim Sheens, who took charge of the club in 2003, they established a reputation as the league’s great entertainers. Benji, Robbie, Sunday afternoons at Leichhardt, trick plays and feelgood footy.
A maiden premiership was achieved in thrilling fashion: Marshall’s stunning flick pass for Pat Richards to crown a length-of-the-field move with a try in the grand final remains an iconic moment.
But there was a problem. The foundations were built on sand. When the stars moved on, or their form dipped, that identity dissipated and old divisions dating back to the club’s formation soon reappeared.
During his time as NRL chief executive from 2016 to 2020, Todd Greenberg never felt the Wests Tigers were able to fully articulate what they stood for.
“I just don’t think they’ve ever really figured out who they should be,” Greenberg tells the Herald. “The single biggest challenge for the long-term success of the Wests Tigers is to nail down their own identity.
“I reckon they’ve underperformed for so long primarily because they are trying to keep everyone happy. But all that does is dilute what they should be, which is the Wests Tigers.”
The club was conceived in 1999 after an uncomfortable arranged marriage of the Balmain Tigers and Western Suburbs Magpies in order to survive the cull of clubs that followed the Super League war, benefiting from a multimillion-dollar incentive package offered by the NRL to clubs willing to merge.
The Magpies had held discussions with the Penrith Panthers, North Queensland Cowboys and New Zealand Warriors, but felt it would be a minor partner in those mergers. So too Balmain in its conversations with Parramatta.
The Wests Tigers were born when Balmain and Wests agreed to a 50-50 partnership. But it didn’t take long for things to change. Players were being signed without the knowledge of the supposed partner.
“From the very first board meeting, it was determined that the future of the club was in the south-west corridor, specifically in the Macarthur region,” says Martin Bullock, the Wests Tigers’ first chief executive.
“Everyone went back to their own boards after that meeting, and they quickly changed hats and began to look after their own interests. Never in my time was there a united focus on the future of the club.”
A former employee of the joint venture said that there were three types of people at the Tigers: Balmain people, Wests people and people that needed to pick a side.
Balmain legend Wayne Pearce was the club’s inaugural coach, and struggled to deal with the hostilities between the factions.
“It was perceived as a forced marriage,” Pearce said. “There were a lot of trust issues that I experienced. It drained me to the point where I walked away from it. I had another two years on my contract as a coach, but it drained me to the point where I needed to move on.“
“I found it to be a different club to any club I’d been with,” says former coach Mick Potter of his time at the helm from 2013 to 2014. “It was a political hotbed.
“I knew the first day I went in there it was going to be a tough gig. I went in there to coach, not be a politician. It was conflicted. They were pretending to try and make something of a tough situation, but both clubs didn’t want to lose their identity.”
Former NRL CEO Dave Smith attempted, with some success, to force the factions towards a common purpose when he restructured the club’s board at the end of 2014.
Three independents, including chair Marina Go, were added to the board, with two directors each from Balmain and Wests. It was a stark change to the 5-5 boardroom split in the first 15 years of the joint venture’s existence.
Majority control has since shifted to Wests Ashfield Leagues Club – the 90 per cent shareholders in the joint venture who now hold five of the eight seats on the Tigers board.
As a football team, the Wests Tigers have struggled to rediscover their own identity beyond that of constant mediocrity.
Incumbent coach Michael Maguire has tried to forge an identity built on guts and steel. In the recently aired Fox Sports documentary, Wild Wests: Tales from Tiger Town, Maguire is shown yelling at his players: “The Wests Tigers are always in a fight!“
Those words will ring hollow to those who have followed the club’s performances over the past decade.
The contents of the documentary have become the butt of jokes and on-field jibes from rival teams, who know from experience the Tigers are anything but.
After missing out on the finals for the 10th successive year, the Tigers now find themselves in a familiar position – whispers of discontent in the playing ranks, fingers being pointed at the coach and questions being asked of the club’s front office. All of this threatens to spill over into the club’s internal review.
“There will be a specific focus on the football department with an emphasis on this year’s results,” chairman Lee Hagipantelis tells the Herald.
“The results do not reflect the financial commitment and investment that this club has made to the football department, nor the potential of what we believe to be a very exciting young roster. Difficult questions need to be asked, but more importantly they must be answered.”
In the first of a two-part investigation into rugby league’s most maligned club, stunning revelations highlight why the sleeping giant is lost in the finals wilderness.
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