the rabble starts with Canterbury Cup
WE are WESTS TIGERS
play as them in every grade show some unity we are not Magpies we are tigers
That’s just petty
not petty I woukd say petty that Magpies are the Canterbury Cup side considering jersey flogged is wests tigers
No NRL side is represented in CC. They all have feeder teams. The Magpies are the WT’s feeder team.
others are not joint ventures either
we are a joint venture and should be represented equally in Canterbury Cup not just through one side that being Magpies
Roosters have newtown
Manly have blackthorn
again they are not Merged entities like Wests Tigers
it is divisive
The sooner all and sundry realise that the Weststigers are no longer a joint venture the better.
Like it or not Wests Ashfield own the club paid all debts owing by Balmain and to my knowledge are funding all Balmain junior leagues .
I do not understand why the club has not requested the media to report fact not fiction in regards to the club ! We as supporters have to accept and move forward with the realities as there is no advantage to anyone but seeing things as they are . Yes was a joint venture ..2021not anymore this is not divisive this is fact !
well the day we are called wests Magpies in NRL would be the day they can have membership back.
It wont happen... To over simplify the situation, the NRL actually owns the Licencing, and the clubs lease the "brands" from them. The Tiger has always polled as one of the strongest branding logo's world wide, they wouldnt let its slip away.
About the CC team being Magpies branded... to be honest, its financial to a point, alleviating some of the financial burden off the WT. The real shame in our CC being Magpies, is that we once had a leg up on the competition having both Tigers and Magpies in CC, meaning we had the ability to nurture twice the talent, and we merged them. That was the lost opportunity.
Old rusted on Magpies will remember being pushed out of Pratten Park, to Lidcombe, Humphries old man almost succeeding having booted us from the competition, then being forced out to Campbelltown... we lost fans everytime. Sure there is some militant old fogeys out there, but for the most part us old boys know how it feels to have your OG team put through the ringer, and dont wish it on Balmain either. Too much history to flush down the dunny.
Wests Ashfield has left the door open for Balmain to rise from the ashes, and goes about maintaining Balmains obligations to juniors without much fanfare. Their seats on the WT board returned when debt is repaid. I dont know how they could be any more compassionate to Balmains state of affairs, or why you are so upset.
Do you know honestly, if by some strange outcome Wests were to just become Magpies and Tigers were a thing of the past, I'd probably grow to live with it. It's been so long since I've thought of Magpies as a competitor, in fact I can't even really remember what that feels like. E.g. I saw footage the other week of a 1990s match between Balmain and Wests, it just looked so odd, like a training run; I can't recall thinking of Wests as the enemy.
It's not going to happen, but I know in my heart of hearts that it's the club I love, doesn't really matter what they are called, and I like what the merged club represents, I identify with the heritage, even if we aren't any good at actually playing football.
I listened to Rugby League Digest's case study of the Magpies last week, and the guest speaker was an "old" Magpies fogey (I say old because he doesn't support Wests Tigers, but he's actually younger than me). It was one of the few times that an opinion piece like that got up my nose, and I generally don't engage with the old Magpies or Balmain rhetoric (though I rarely even see Balmain rhetoric anyway?). Someone else mentioned it on here, one of this guy's early complaints was the crowd didn't chant "Wests Wests Wests" they chanted "Ti-gers cha cha cha". He didn't feel the connection to the club and since 2000 he thinks they've steered in the wrong direction.
The host mentioned his opinion that, in purely business terms, the more obvious right-sizing mergers were Wests Bulldogs and Parramatta Tigers. And he noted that one of the prime reasons for Wests and Balmain to merge was to avoid being swallowed up by a more powerful partner.
And he's probably right, but seriously, vomit in my mouth to merge with Bulldogs or Parramatta. I could barely think of two clubs with more disparate values and history and fans to Wests Tigers. When they announced Wests and Balmain were thinking of merging, I knew straight away it was workable, that Wests and Balmain were alike in many many ways and culturally it made sense. Business-wise maybe it didn't make sense. In terms of footballing and operational success, definitely not a sensible move, two clubs run to the brink of bankruptcy. But culturally, aesthetically, historically - absolutely. I was immediately convinced, I didn't need to be lobbied. Both clubs sucked and we had a right to be together, sucking at football together. IIRC technically as a Leagues Club member but not a Football Club member I didn't have a vote; I was 19 at the time.
So if after another 2 decades, it was to become something else, but still the child of old Balmain and Wests, the former my formative club, so be it. 20 years for Balmain and now 20 years for Wests Tigers, very neat.
Not going to happen though.
