Even his biggest supporter surely cannot now defend Wests Tigers coach Mick Potter after a second humiliation in a row when his team conceded 40 second half points to lose 48-4 to the Sydney Roosters at Leichhardt Oval tonight.
In a rare, wet, miserable night in Sydney, the premiers opened up the Tigers like a tin of sardines and only their own incompetence stopped the score from becoming one more associated with cricket than rugby league.
Sadly for Potter, most of the damage was done in the second half, after the home team managed to hold on to be only down 8-nil after the first 40 minutes.
But the floodgates opened in the second half, and it was a procession of tries to the Roosters.
Here’s how it went:
Three minutes into the second half and the Roosters open up a handy lead of 14-nil, after being awarded a dubious penalty by referees obviously sponsored by the time honoured OPSM.
There was some solid defence from the Wests Tigers for the next five minutes, but the Roosters crossed over again and the score started to look ugly at 20-nil in the 48th minute.
Just a minute later, the Roosters collected the ball from the re-start and ridiculously easily scored again, plus a nice conversion from James Maloney to make it 26-nil in the 51st minute.
Then there was another little period of tough defence from Wests and the Roosters failed to score for seven minutes, but in the 58th minute they easily crossed again and the score was 32-nil.
At this stage the nil bit gained some significance for Wests Tigers fans, who wanted to see their team on the scoreboard, but it was not to be, not yet anyway.
When the Roosters next scored in the 61st minute, there was to be no conversion from the sideline, so the score was merely 36-nil and some relief fort Wests fans.
The bad part about the last try was that there was just no communication between the Wests Tigers defence, which made the Roosters’ work quite easy.
And so it came to pass that the Roosters were leading 40-nil in the 64th minute, and 42-nil after Maloney’s conversion.
Finally, just when all hope had been extinguished, the young kids who make up the Tigers backline these days, Luke Brooks, Mitc hell Moses and the rest, combined to put debutant Jy Hitchcox over in the corner.
At 42-4 some pride had been restored, but whether it was enough to save Potter’s job time will tell.
Not that the Roosters were finished, by the way. Their body language said they wanted to get 50, and scored one more try to make it 48-4 with a minute to go.
There’s a lot more one can say about this Wests Tigers side, but it’s probably best to leave it as: ‘bring on next year’.
