The end of this horrible NRL season can’t come quickly enough for Wests Tigers fans.
Just two rounds to go and they can start to talk about next season.
Matches against St George Illawarra this Sunday at Parramatta and Canberra Raiders at Leichhardt in round 25 are still to come.
Until they have been done and dusted, fans will naturally be wondering if there’s more suffering in store for them like the one they experienced last Saturday night from the SCG.
When a team loses 72-6 it’s hard to see any positives, but that’s because there weren’t any against the Roosters.
Commentators – and Roosters coaches and players – put the massive scoreline down to a superlative effort from the Sydney side.
Some lip service was thrown out about how poor the Wests Tigers were, but it was nowhere near the mark.
The truth is that they were outrageously bad, and if it was legal the players who took part should have their pay docked and their employment terminated.
All season there have been signs of a team whose heart is not in it, and it all reached bottom against the Roosters.
Apologies for being a broken record, but unless the club board and management accept that the Wests Tigers has become a departure lounge for players and do something about it, the joint venture is doomed.
It just cannot continue to operate under the delusion that it is a place where good players will want to play for.
A quick look at the current roster will show you that there are players in it who should not be playing NRL.
But Wests Tigers have been signing them up because beggars can’t be choosers, simple as that.
The answer is not that hard: one home ground representing one tribe, just like every other NRL club.
Being nomads may be good business, but it is also setting up the club to be a permanent basket case.
We have been promised this will end and next season will be the start of something new.
Time will tell.
In the meantime, poor Brett Kimmorley, the lamb to the slaughter these last few weeks, has named a 22-man squad for Sunday’s Round 24 match against St George Illawarra Dragons at CommBank Stadium.
The are several forced changes due to injury with Ken Maumalo (groin), Alex Seyfarth (pectoral) and Luke Garner (concussion) out of action.
Kitione Kautoga is in line to make his NRL debut and becomes the seventh Wests Tigers player to do so this season. He replaces Seyfarth on the bench while Thomas Freebairn shifts into the second row for Garner.
Joe Ofahengaue moves into the front row for the suspended James Tamou, with Fa’amanu Brown shifting to lock, and Jake Simpkin starting at hooker.
Round 24: Wests Tigers v Dragons
1. Daine Laurie
2. Brent Naden
3. Starford To’a
4. Asu Kepaoa
5. Junior Pauga
6. Adam Doueihi (c)
7. Jock Madden
8. Joe Ofahengaue
9. Jake Simpkin
10. Zane Musgrove
11. Thomas Freebairn
12. Kelma Tuilagi
13. Fa’amanu Brown
14. Fonua Pole
15. Austin Dias
16. Jacob Liddle
17. Kitione Kautoga
