Its quite simple.
The Wests Tigers are the joke of the code and as the clowns of the league, they provide entertainment to all concerned with the game. If we wrote down all the idiot things that people in charge of and playing for this club have done over the past decade, we'd fill 10 pages. I mean only last week Richo claimed we had the best spine in the league. Look at the attention seeking crap that was involved with our jersey and sponsor reveal....The antics of our club make other fans feel better about their own...."could be worse, we arent the Tigers".
Its not just our fans eating up every article. Schadenfruede plays its role and having a slightly sensationalist headline will always result in huge clicks. Our club exists in many ways for other fans to have a giggle and talk about our misfortunes.
The biggest story this morning is that Madge wants his players to wear shirts at training. Thats pretty boring compared with us and our generous player options, board infighting and ex administrators plotting revenge. Id suggest we would make a popular topic for a reality tv show...except we have already tried that....and failed lol.
Yep ! But I actually think it’s deeper than that , or its roots are def purely more nefarious . In the 2010s the tigers were by far and away thanks to B Marshall , the biggest club in the game , when it came to generating revenue . And there definitely was a period during then that we had a semi ban on news limited media .
So IMO I think with them , there’s a lot of people there like buzz , Ritchie and Crawley and his brother who’s the producer on most of thier big shows, who definitely have an axe to grind .
But you’re right , we do it too ourselves nowadays. I just don’t think that’s where the original stuff came from .
I mean up until the last 3 years , the joke was we always came 9th. And I remember hearing that joke as early as 2014, just after Benji left.
I think it is deeper , and I also think it’s elitism as well . Even when these guys talk about Penrith there’s a condescending kind of tone , it’s almost begrudging .
Nearly all thier pundits are guys who live in the Shire . Did you know that ?
James Graham lives at the top of my in-laws hill . Ennis lives near a cafe I used to take my son, when I lived there. And a shit tonne live in the same 2 suburbs , I’m not going to name suburbs for privacy reasons .