Wests Tigers boss takes holiday in US as Galvin crisis engulfs club
Danny Weidler
April 27, 2025 — 5.00am
The timing of Shane Richardson’s attempt to bring the Lachie Galvinsituation to a head has been widely condemned. Now we may be able to shed light on his haste to get a contract decision out of the 19-year-old.
Richardson has flown to the United States on a family holiday and will miss the next two Tigers games. That includes Sunday’s clash with the Sharks at Leichhardt, where Galvin will run out in the top grade
for the first time since it was revealed he wanted out of the club.
The experienced club boss says even though the Tigers are going through a crisis “it’s business as usual”.
Richardson has a wedding to attend, but a vacation in the middle of the season is unusual for a club boss. The rival clubs I spoke to agreed with that notion. Particularly when you’re dealing with the biggest story in the game.
“It’s my niece’s wedding,” Richardson said. “I only have one brother and two nieces. I had it booked since September last year. The board has been aware since then. It is business as usual. The board has no problems. Family first.”
It’s difficult to argue with the decision to prioritise family, but the timing is unfortunate.
Galvin knocked back a $5.5 million, six-year extension offer that prompted the Tigers to announce his exit at the end of 2026. The Tigers released an extraordinary statement, declaring Galvin would not be with the club beyond 2026, but that he is expected to see out the final 18 months of his contract.
It’s not the first time Richardson has departed mid-season. Last May, he spent weeks in England allegedly, and bizarrely, trying to offer his own players to Super League clubs. Richardson has spent plenty of time in England during his career and visited several clubs on the trip.
Richardson justified the trip by saying he was trying to shop players to Super League clubs to clear out the roster for a rebuild. No players that we are aware of went to England as a direct result of those conversations.
Former Tigers chief executive Justin Pascoe was heavily criticised by sections of the media when he went on a family trip with his young children to the Northern Territory. News Corp has previously hammered any club boss taking time out during the year. Fox Sports chief league reporter James Hooper wrote of Pascoe at the time: “This bloke is supposedly the boss. Leadership? Not so much. There’s an off-season from October to March for annual leave and family holidays.”
The timing of Richardson’s absence from Tiger Town could not be worse, with the Galvin issue up in the air and legal action looming. Everyone is entitled to take leave, and he can work via a laptop, but he has been the self-appointed protector of the club.
The Tigers boss is under fire for how this has all played out. It certainly didn’t seem necessary to demand an answer from Galvin two weeks ago as he was under contract until the end of next year.
But maybe Richardson believed he could sign Galvin then go on holiday having saved the day? Surely, given the involvement of controversial manager Isaac Moses, Richardson knew that was a long shot?
Instead, even Richo’s supporters – which this columnist has been – are questioning the timing and manner of these negotiations.
Richardson has been on a charm offensive with some of his supporters in the media who won’t touch this story, but some of his messaging is difficult to swallow. The emotional issue has been the notion that Benji Marshall’s coaching is a reason Galvin does not want to stay at the club. That story was spread by the Tigers, not the Moses camp.
Richardson has been trying to muddy that fact through interviews, but it simply is not correct.
Not only does he risk losing the PR war by leaving the country at this point, Richardson is leaving the Tigers to fight this battle through Marshall and the players, as they don’t have an experienced media manager to handle one of the bigger storms to have engulfed the club in recent times. That is not to criticise the person they have wedged into the position from another area of their business.
Another problem is the media release the Tigers put out in response to the story broken by this masthead’s journalist Michael Chammas and myself that Galvin had rejected the club’s offer to keep him. That media release will be used by the Moses camp to explain the creation of the unsafe working environment they claim Galvin is in.
He was ostracised from that moment, and frozen out by the playing group. It was already a developing situation behind the scenes, but from the moment the club officially confirmed the story, the anti-Galvin sentiment kicked in.
Richardson may also want to be careful with his words the next time he jumps on a podcast on the PR campaign. Eyebrows were raised when he told James Graham on The Bye Round that the Tigers spent six weeks finding “opportunities for him in the future, opportunities for him externally, opportunities for him around a deal done with a major car company, a whole range of things that we put in place to surround the deal”.
We’re not sure what he planned to “surround the deal” with, nor are we suggesting any wrongdoing, but we can tell you that clubs were left scratching their heads after that comment. The NRL was also made aware of it by people in the game.
