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.
Can Wests Tigers break their shackles in 2023? On Friday they head to Melbourne for rugby league’s toughest assignment: beating Craig Bellamy’s Storm on home turf. Few give them a chance of victory. The last time it happened was 2018, when they defeated Melbourne twice in five weeks. Ivan Cleary was coach, Benji Marshall was captain and the Tigers won three straight to start the year. They haven’t won three in a row since.
Nevertheless, there is something dangerous bubbling behind the scenes at Wests Tigers: hope.
Hope arrived when Tim Sheens, 73, signed as a second-coming coach after his 2003-12 reign delivered a 2005 premiership, 2010 preliminary final and 2011 semi-final. Hope grew when the club moved to a new $78m heartland base in November. And it sprang eternal when 2005 title hero and prodigal son Marshall was announced to succeed Sheens as coach in 2025.
The preseason rumblings out of Concord spoke of revolution as sorcerer Sheens and his apprentice Marshall took the Tigers by the tail and gave them back their teeth. Head office confirmed roadshow games to Tamworth and Hamilton (NZ) and record memberships. The NRL draw gave them three winnable games to start, including two at spiritual home Leichhardt Oval.
Alas, against teams that finished 12th, 13th and 14th in 2022, the Tigers failed to deliver. Yet at this captain’s run, there’s no 13-year finals drought or three-game losing streak on show. Sheens strolls behind the backline like a kelpie with his herd, barking orders. Marshall is out front, coaxing the players into attack on foot or with kicks, alone or together. Spirits are high.
So why will hope not die in 2023 as it has before? Because the new Tiger leaders won’t let it. “Right now we’re working hard to get off the ground floor,” Sheens says with steel. “The most important thing I ask of my teams is effort, and effort has been there. Execution will come. There’s losing a game and there’s getting beaten – we’ve lost three but we’re not beaten yet.”
Sheens won three titles with Canberra (1989, 90, 94) but the Tigers in 2005 was the sweetest.
The last thing he did before leaving the club in 2012 was to sign local juniors Luke Brooks, Mitchell Moses and James Tedesco to form the spine of the next Tigers premiership side. “They were only kids of 16, 17 at the time,” Sheens says today. “But they were the future.”
And, by 2017, the past. Tedesco left for the Roosters, Moses for the Eels. A third member of the Big Four, captain Aaron Woods, went to the Bulldogs, bemoaning the club’s lack of stability. “I never thought I’d be wearing colours other than orange and black,” he grumbled. Future Storm then Wallabies matchwinner Marika Koroibete fled in 2014.
Brooks stayed but, in becoming the NRL player with the most appearances to never have played in a final, was cursed as the club whipping boy. “I first met Luke as a kid and he’s a 28-year-old man now,” Sheens seethes. “In that time he’s been bullied to hell, including by our own so-called fans.”
The coach shares his playmaker’s pain of playing a 12-year first-grade career without a final. “But Luke is tough and he’s still got speed. He proved that again on the weekend.” On the weekend Brooks sparked the lightning Sheens and Marshall are aiming to bottle in 2023. At 26-6 down to the Bulldogs, the No 6 scored, then set up three dazzling tries in four minutes.
Like the rogues in the stockade 230 years ago, the Tigers must become “men of character”. “We’re a young merger club with old DNA from Balmain Tigers and Wests Magpies,” Sheens says. “Every team is unique – different backgrounds and nationalities, all of varying ages from 18 to 35. As coach I believe I’ve got to be consistent by treating them all differently.”
On Friday Sheens has a base-salary pivot partnering million-dollar man Brooks in the halves. He’s moved an injured playmaker to fullback and punted a popular young star to the bench. But when I ask Sheens if his Tigers believe they can win the premiership, his old eyes smile. “Everyone dreams of the trophies,” he says. “But there’s two competitions: the regular season then the semis. So we will fight our way through the first to get to the second. We believe we’ll do it.”
