A Shallow Dive into the 2021 Wests Tigers
Good lord, the absolute scale of the mess of this football club is immense. Considering the Tigers finished thirteenth, and not last, with an 8-16 record and -214 points difference, it seems like an overreaction in isolation. But for a Sydney club that hasn’t played in the finals since 2011, and bearing in mind there’s a 50/50 chance of making the finals every year, tempers are rising. There’s only so many ninth and fourteenth places that people will accept, without a single indication that things will genuinely improve, before they give up. Or at least get very angry on social media and turn on each other like rabid dogs.
The Victory Lap
From the pre-season deep dive:
Despite this, there’s nothing to really recommend the Tigers this year. They’re pinning their hopes on Luke Brooks, a player I have time for, especially based on his 2019 production, but who struggled last year and the club doesn’t seem to be particularly setting him up for glory in 2021. James Tamou is a good signing but Wests need so much more. Maguire might be the man to steer the ship in current circumstances and has a reasonable record of extracting the best out of what he’s been given.
There’s just so much nothing in the roster – all the serious talents have gravitated elsewhere, not least Harry Grant – that it’s difficult to see how the Tigers plan to break out of the rut. Perhaps Edene Gebbie or Joey Leilua will get his head in the game. Maybe Daine Laurie will deliver earlier. Maybe, perhaps and it’s all relying on potential, not proven performance. Fundamentally, they were a bottom half team last season, they’ve lost their best player and during the off-season, they haven’t improved as much as the teams around them or even some of the teams below them.
While the level of performance was correctly forecast, I don’t think it accurately describes the 2021 Wests Tigers experience. The roster has some sparkles – Doueihi (who jumped up in my reckoning at least), Utoikamanu, Laurie, Mikaele, Leilua and so on – and they were surrounded by guys who largely couldn’t be bothered.
In some part, blame for that rests with Michael Maguire. He’s lost 30 class Elo rating points since starting at the Tigers, so it’s not quite the certainty for the guillotine that 50 points would imply but there’s definitely pressure on. When you combine his seeming inability to do the job with the Tigers propaganda documentary in which Maguire had editing rights, this reflects poorly on upper management who, at the time of writing, do not appear to be taking action or under any pressure themselves. I’ve said before that Justin Pascoe should be gone and I don’t think 2021 showed any reason to change that, not least because it was so similar to what we’ve seen previously (I’m almost certain I’ve said before that ‘there’s only so many ninth places people will tolerate’ before and yet here we are).
What happened
One of Maguire’s more baffling moves mid-year was to shift Adam Doueihi from five-eighth to centre to make room for Origin superstar*, Moses Mbye.
The thing is that it kind of worked. The Tigers went 3-4 during this period, with wins over an Origin-depleted Panthers, Knights and Dragons and losses to Souths, Parra, Melbourne and, for some reason, the New Zealand-Central Coast Warriors. Putting Doueihi back to 6 maybe, maybe changes one of those outcomes. So perhaps it’s less “worked” and more “wasn’t a total disaster”. That extra win was still two short of what the Tigers needed to make the finals.
But the numbers show a different story. The Tigers gave up 20 Taylors in production – roughly 5% of the average NRL team’s output – by switching Doueihi, just in his contribution alone. That might not sound like a lot but losing 20 Taylors moves the Tigers’ average output from eleventh best in the league to fifteenth, wedged between the Broncos and the Bulldogs. That’s without considering that Mbye was worse at five-eighth than any of the centres were at playing centre. It was, truly, a baffling decision and one that should be exhibit A in the trial of Michael Maguire.
How about some good news? Look at these guys:
All those young guys I cited before don’t look like they were actually quite that productive but still better than most of the team. Unlike last year, where only six Tigers exceeded the league average TPR mark, this year ten did. So that’s progress and at least the youngsters have time on their side.
There’s always next year
If the problem the Tigers had was assembling a good, young core of a football team, then it’d be problem solved. Unfortunately, every team has a good, young core of players to build around. Some of the teams coming up from behind them have very good young players. The actual problem is taking that and building on it to create a productive, winning football team. Not many clubs manage it and, as I’ve been saying for some time now, the Tigers do not have what it takes in their front office to succeed. Dumb luck would have a NRL team in the finals at least once in a decade – the Titans have done it twice with less than twelve wins – and the Tigers can’t even hurdle that bar.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse.
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