Panic? Tigers have too much pride to let poor start dictate season
Benji Marshall
March 25, 2012
Young tyro … Wests Tigers prop Aaron Woods is tipped to be a future representative player.
Photo: Getty Images
The worst thing we could do at the Wests Tigers right now is panic. And we won't. There's nothing to panic about. If we were playing our best football, and were still losing games, then that would be a signal for panic. But we haven't played anywhere near our best football this season. Why would we panic when our best football is still ahead of us?
Two losses from three matches is not the ideal start, but we've got confidence in ourselves and in our team. Maybe this is a stretch, but there might be one positive out of our start: we're not premiership favourites any more. That sort of pressure doesn't worry me, but possibly as a team we have let it get to us. The important thing is that we believe we're a strong side.
We've placed high expectations on ourselves, and the season so far hasn't panned out the way we anticipated. We won our first game, but we were lucky to get away with it, and in our next two games we were poor.
In the first half against Manly, we played some good football, but in the second half we came up with the opposite. Against the Dragons, we let through some tries through the middle. No footballer enjoys being called soft, but that was how our defensive effort was described in the middle on that night. We get the chance to right those wrongs against the Raiders tomorrow night.
We are all keen to turn around the perception that the Tigers are weak through the middle. There's been some pressure on some of our younger forwards, but I've got no doubt that both Aaron Woods and Matt Groat are future representative players. Right now, they're still young. We all have confidence they can get us going forward.
We can't blame our defence alone either. Our attack put a lot of pressure on our defence; we dropped a lot of ball. Tim Moltzen, too, will improve from here. I have no doubt he is glad the game against the Dragons is out of the way, so people can move on and he can move on. Some of the stuff he copped, the sledging before and after the game, was uncalled for. It wasn't pretty at all; everything was aimed at him by their supporters.
Tim's still growing in the position. It's been difficult for him, making a go of fullback and then switching to halfback. It's going to take a bit of time for him to get used to the position again. But I've seen his progression at training. We're still working on our combination, and we'll get another chance to refine it tomorrow night.
As a team, we need to get back to basics. There was a significant turnaround in our intensity last week at training. It always happens when you lose a couple of games in a row. You get more desperate; you don't want to lose three games in a row. I'm sure that intensity will be reproduced on the field against Canberra at Campbelltown.
It's not about proving anyone wrong. We simply don't want to let each other down. That has been our attitude during training. Over the past few weeks we've let each other down and we don't want to do that again.
Of course, we'll have to do it without Robbie Farah. Having our captain suspended will make winning difficult, but at the same time we still feel like we have a good squad, with the depth to cover for injuries and suspensions.
Canberra have a massive forward pack, but with a longer-than-normal week giving us time to recover - and importantly giving Gareth Ellis time to repair - we're hoping for significant improvement.
It's a tough sport. There are no easy games any more. But we'll bounce back.
