Wests Tigers hooker Robbie Farah victim of Jason Taylor power play Danny Weidler
Published: August 29, 2015 - 10:22PM
Robbie Farah was already out of State of Origin III and was having a coffee with a few mates in the bar of the team hotel. Nursing a busted hand, Farah was down in the dumps when the topic of Pat Richards and a deal with French team Catalans came up.
In the group was Farah's agent, Sam Ayoub. Farah turned to his agent and quipped: "You might have to send me there."
The conversation moved on. The French comment was lost on most at the gathering. At that point there was no indication from the Tigers that Farah was a goner. Not publicly anyway.
But Farah was already feeling he was on the outer. He's been through two major injuries and had surgery. There was no call from coach Jason Taylor to see how the skipper had pulled up. The media has been calling Farah day and night and following his every move. Maybe the coach had been getting his information from the constant updates?
Whatever the case, Farah wasn't feeling the love.
On the last day in July, it was made official. Ayoub met with Taylor and acting Tigers boss Phil Moss. The meeting took place in Ayoub's Leichhardt office and it began with small talk about other clients Ayoub had at the Tigers, before it moved on to Farah.
Taylor said the club needed to move forward, and Ayoub said they needed to pay out Farah's deal. Taylor said that would happen.
It is then that Ayoub had to work out how to tell Farah what he already suspected. By this point, Farah was already being left out of leadership meetings. He had been making plans as a result to quit as Tigers skipper. Farah would wear players complaining to him about Taylor, but felt compromised about whinging to the coach. He had been blamed for the demise of former Tigers coach Mick Potter, and that took a toll on him. Farah believed that to continue at the club he needed to take a back seat.
The Tigers played the Raiders on a Monday night and Ayoub arranged a promotional job for Farah in Canberra and told the club that Farah would make his own way back to Sydney. It was an excuse for Ayoub to have three hours in the car with his client. Again there was small talk before he dumped the news on Farah.
Farah was angry, but not surprised. He was struggling to make sense of what had happened. Farah had spilled blood, won a comp and considered the Tigers home. Just a few weeks earlier, with a busted shoulder, he backed up from Origin and played a game he shouldn't have and broke his hand.
All one-club players talk about their "legacy" and Farah could see his being destroyed; taken away from him by a man who had been in the gig for five minutes; a coach who had been hired after Potter and who had achieved even worse results.
And then it became personal. Farah had taken pay cuts and delayed payments in order to help the club. What is not known is that Farah was owed at least $400,000 from his last contract. He was to be paid the arrears in this contract and it was to be back-ended. Farah deferred the money to help the club, where officials had made a mess of the salary cap and made promises they could not keep.
And, yes, he will get the money now regardless and it will be more than the $1.9 million that is being touted. It will be a couple of hundred thousand more than that.
Now, without stating the obvious, that money could well have been used for investments, and Farah had to pass on some opportunities during that time.
None of that will worry Taylor. He has told Farah the money will be forthcoming. He just wants Farah out of the club.
It needs to be made very clear that this is a power play from Taylor. He can't make this team his own with a big and challenging character in the team but surely that is a fault of the coach not the player.
Taylor saw the roster he was getting when he took over. To complain now is like a home owner purchasing a property under a flight path and then whinging about the noise.
Nevertheless, Ayoub had been doing his duty and making contact with teams. He also had a discussion with a senior Tigers official, where he questioned Taylor's approach. Ayoub said he would endeavour to get Farah a start in England in 2017 but, because of the short notice, he would do it tough to get a deal at a club for 2016. Ayoub thought that an English club might swallow up $500,000 of the debt the Tigers owed Farah a huge saving for the Tigers but he needed to operate without the move to oust Farah being made public.
The official said they would have a chat to Taylor but that clearly didn't work. The news coming out interfered with a potential deal with a Sydney club where Ayoub had been operating on the basis of secrecy.
Ayoub then had a meeting with Farah, Taylor and Rod Reddy where things got heated. Farah was told he would be playing reserve grade and Ayoub labelled Reddy a "dinosaur". Ayoub also made the point that Taylor was using Farah as a scapegoat for his poor season.
At the meeting, Taylor was reminded of his duty to pick on form. At one point, Ayoub got up and ordered Farah to leave the room and the pair ended up walking out on Taylor and Reddy, despite the coach saying the meeting wasn't over. From Ayoub's perspective, there will only be another meeting when Taylor, in Ayoub's opinion, understands the meaning of a playing contract.
"My view is clubs have the right to tell players their time is up, but the spin that has been put out there on this matter is purely disrespectful," Ayoub said. "I'm going through a similar matter with another club but because there is no ego involved we will get a good and fair result for both parties and it will be done without the fuss we have seen here."
That may not be the end of the fury. Taylor's threat to play Farah in second grade could lead to legal action, as there is a requirement in the NRL that players are picked on merit. There is a fair argument that Farah is good enough to play first grade when Laurie Daley says he will play Origin next year. And it's no secret in the Blues camp that Farah is close to Daley's favourite player if not his outright favourite.
And here is the kicker: Tigers players have told me they have told Farah he has their backing and they want to play with him next year. That will be passed on to Taylor.
Danny Weidler is a reporter with Channel Nine.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...-jason-taylor-power-play-20150829-gjaqj7.html
