Second-tier salary cap woes prevent Wests Tigers coach Jason Taylor wielding axe Adrian Proszenko
Published: April 27, 2016 - 10:19PM
Wests Tigers coach Jason Taylor won't be able to threaten underperforming players with the axe, with the club right on the limit of its second-tier salary cap.
After a bright start to the season, the pressure is on the club after five consecutive losses, including the meek 60-6 surrender to Canberra last weekend. That performance has heaped pressure on Taylor as he prepares to coach against his former team, South Sydney, at ANZ Stadium on Thursday.
Not that personnel changes are likely. The club has been forced to use 24 players after a quarter of the season, one fewer than the amount needed to get through all of last year. That is in stark contrast to the top teams, with Cronulla and North Queensland using 19 players and Brisbane using 20.
Taylor inherited a raft of salary cap issues when he took the reins and those problems have been exacerbated by a spate of injuries this season. Taylor has had to blood Josh Addo-Carr, Josh Aloiai and JJ Felise, while back-up recruits Joel Edwards, Jack Littlejohn and Jordan Rankin have made their first-grade debuts.
The granting of early releases to Jesse Parahi and Lamar Manuel-Liolevave has consequences to the club's second-tier balance sheet. The lack of depth has been further exposed by an ankle injury to captain Aaron Woods, while Matt Ballin's knee injury has prevented him from playing since shifting from Manly.
The issues mean Taylor has little scope to drop underperforming players. Taylor said his team was still smarting from the Raiders hiding.
"They have been hurting, big-time," Taylor said. "The group has been hurting for a number of weeks now and that's the hardest part about it. We've been really close in all of our games this season, particularly the ones we've lost, to playing our best footy.
"Then last week we had an aberration, that was a performance that just wasn't good enough. We let everybody down who is involved in our club, we let our fans down too, which is disappointing.
"One game doesn't make a season and eight games don't make a season. It's one really poor performance - at this point that's all it is. We get a chance to bounce back."
Taylor knows he is under pressure as his side sits above only the Knights and Roosters on the ladder.
"It's part of the game, it's part of this job and it's part of a lot of jobs in the world today," he said. "I'm fine because what I know is what matters is our performance. How things have gone this week is based on the fact that we played really poorly and it wasn't good enough. That's what comes on the back of that sort of performance.
"It's up to us, we control the pressure by performing better. If we don't perform better the pressure will remain or it will increase. If we do it will go away. We're in charge of that as a club, we're in charge of that as a team and we're the ones who can do something about it."
Taylor brushed off suggestions his team were no longer playing for him. "It's clear to see that the performances this season have been full of great character," he said. "It was only six days prior to the Canberra game that we took the Melbourne Storm into extra time and played a really strong game. That stuff comes on the back of one poor performance, I find that stuff disappointing ...
"You're not happy when you're sitting in the coach's box and you see the team performing poorly but it's not due to what I'll receive from the fans and the media, it's because you're disappointed in your own performance. We have absolute pride in our performance and that wasn't good enough last week."
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...ason-taylor-wielding-axe-20160427-gog61p.html
