Out at Wests Tigers HQ there’s not much doing. No players running drills. No fans waiting for selfies. No camera crews hovering. It’s just me, a skinny Burmese cat and the New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, slinking around (the latter “just passing by”). These are the chilly winds that greet a side that loses three straight to start the season and hasn’t played finals since 2011.
Turns out the turf, much like the team, is under renovation, so the Tigers are training in an adjacent park that, in 1793, was once the old Longbottom convict stockade – a barracks, refuge and home base for a long line of rebels, escapers and enforcers. Together as a gang, these exiles worked the lands of what is today the industrial hub of Tigerland, sharing every season of boom and bust and, when deemed “men of good character”, winning freedom.
