Wests Tigers’ tale of woe is a Sydney property disaster story
Zoe Samios and
Lucy Slade
Dec 5, 2025 – 6.05pm
When Wests Tigers majority owner Holman Barnes Group sacked the club’s four independent directors earlier this week, a collective eye roll could be felt across the NRL.
It was just the latest problem for the club, which has endured two decades of poor on-field performance, leadership turmoil and financial challenges caused by poor strategic decisions.
The Wests Tigers last won a premiership in 2005 and last made the finals in 2011, despite having the support of powerful corporate figures such as billionaire developer Harry Triguboff and International Olympic Committee vice-president John Coates.
But for a brief moment, the independent directors, led by former NSW premier Barry O’Farrell, had given hope to frustrated fans who had long called for stability.
O’Farrell and his independent peers, Annabelle Williams, Charlie Viola and Michelle McDowell,
alongside chief executive Shane Richardson, had offered green shoots of success. The club, under coach Benji Marshall, finished 13th (it had the wooden spoon the previous three years) and star players such as Jarome Luai and Jahream Bula convinced some that the worst was over.
In just five days, it all unravelled.
At the centre of the mess is HBG, the majority owner of the Wests Tigers, which ultimately wants more say in how the club is run.
The group has complained about a lack of oversight and communications over changes to a jersey and the future of club matches at its spiritual home, Leichhardt Oval. Privately, there are fears the Wests Tigers brand may be pulled in favour of the club’s west faction, the Western Suburbs Magpies.
“In order to take back control and have the ability to reconstitute the board, the only lever the Holman Barnes Group had to pull was to remove the four independent board members,” chief executive Daniel Paton told
The Sydney Morning Herald.
Most of the people contacted by
AFR Weekend, who asked for anonymity to speak freely about the situation, were sceptical of these complaints. They pointed to HBG’s board representation – musician Dennis Burgess, chairman of HBG, and Leo Epifania, the Western Suburbs Magpies’ general manager.
How HBG came to control the Wests Tigers is a story in itself. It can be traced back more than two decades to the arrival of Star Sydney’s casino and a bungled property development that took its joint venture partner, the Balmain Tigers, to the brink.
The Wests Tigers were formed in 1999 as a desperate, reluctant joint venture of two clubs – the Balmain Tigers and Magpies. Like most rugby league teams at the time, the Tigers and the Magpies were propped up by their respective leagues clubs. Those clubs made most of their money from poker machines, and used a chunk of it to fund the NRL teams.
The clubs merged because both were struggling and the NRL was looking to cut the number of teams.
But once together the Tigers continued to struggle after Sydney’s flagship casino, Star, opened less than 3 kilometres away from its club. It was open 24 hours a day and punters who had typically spent their money at the leagues club in Rozelle started going down the road to the casino. Higher poker machine taxes and the introduction of smoking bans made things worse, and by 2009 debts were more than $20 million.
The Balmain Leagues Club knew it needed cash. What it had was prime land, and decided to sell to a developer who could create housing and provide a club on the bottom floor.
Talks to redevelop the Balmain Leagues Club began in 2004, and the first major setback came in 2008 during the global financial crisis. Joint venture partner Reed Construction went broke because it was funded by Lehman Brothers, the global investment firm at the centre of the global meltdown.
Then, legendary Tigers and Australia player-turned-developer Ben Elias entered into a joint venture with Ian Wright to convert the rundown Tigers clubhouse into a high-rise development. Their company bought the club’s headquarters for $1 in 2009 in return for taking over its debts of $23.5 million.
The pair submitted the first Rozelle Village plans to Leichhardt Council (now part of the Inner West Council) in 2009, to build three 12-storey residential towers and townhouses that would create 145 dwellings and restaurants, shops, commercial offices, a public plaza and a new Balmain Leagues Club. It would cost just under $100 million.
The development was controversial and ambitious, as the housing crisis and subsequent push for new developments had not yet had a strong impact on Sydney. The application was rejected by a planning panel in 2010, the same year the loss-making venue closed.
Whether Elias was to blame for the failed development is disputed. Sources with knowledge of the situation believe his plan put the club under further financial pressure; others say the fault lies with a state government not ready for such ambitious plans.
Simultaneously, the government was considering leasing the site as a construction base for the Sydney Metro West tunnel that is currently under way to connect Westmead to the CBD via the underground rail line, but they decided against it.
In 2011, Elias and Wright tried again with a more ambitious proposal: a $217.5 million development for a 24 and 20-storey tower, 247 residential apartments and a commercial precinct with a new leagues club. That was also rejected by the planning commission in 2014 when the state was run by the Coalition and then premier O’Farrell.
The traffic and transport impacts were judged a “fundamental impediment”, and adverse impacts on residents and a lack of car parking meant the development was deemed to be not in the public interest.
Another $117 million plan was lodged with Leichhardt Council in 2015 for a 12-storey tower similar to the one in 2009, but that was refused by the Land and Environment Court in 2016. Things were going from bad to worse.
Balmain owed the NRL $5.4 million, which it borrowed when the league’s club had closed. Wests Ashfield increased its stake to 75 per cent, with Balmain retaining a 25 per cent share to keep the Tigers brand alive.
Elias and Wright baled out of the development in 2018 by selling the site to a company called Grand Rozelle, owned by Heworth Investment. The development retained the public name Rozelle Village despite the change in ownership.
Later that year, a final application was submitted to Inner West Council. After a range of amendments, the development was accepted in September 2020.
Finally, there was light at the end of the tunnel. It turned out to be a NSW government-shaped train.
Just before construction could start in 2021, the government decided it needed the site to build the underground rail tunnel. The NSW valuer-general issued a compulsory acquisition notice in April 2021, saying it would lease the site for seven years. Those plans never came to fruition, but they delayed construction for about two years.
While the site was in limbo, a suspicious fire tore through the derelict and abandoned clubhouse. Police reported two teenage boys were seen running from the area soon after the incident in 2022, the
Herald reported.
The final Rozelle Village plans allow for the construction of a 16-storey building with 227 dwellings, a commercial and retail precinct and a new Balmain Leagues Club, according to the state significant development application that was updated last September.
One of the biggest agitators against the development in the early stages was Leichhardt Council mayor (now Inner West Council mayor) Darcy Byrne, who opposed the scale of the early proposals. The latest version, which was approved under his leadership, is far bigger. It’s an irony not lost on Tigers officials.
The 2009 application was four stories lower and 82 fewer dwellings than that has been approved. The final estimated cost is $300 million, a two-fold increase in costs from the first plan.
But after 16 years of limbo since the first application, the approved leagues club plans came too late for the Tigers, who had already lost control.
