Patience....

The Chad said:
I've seen the frustration levels rising with every week & every loss. I'm not here to say anybody is wrong, but looking at things in a slightly different way...

To me it currently feels like Sheens is sifting through his current Top 30 to see who stays on & who moves on. I don't think anyone at the club expects the team to win a premiership UNDER Sheens. I'd say the whole role for Sheens now is to get the best combination of players together in order for Benji to step into a squad ready to compete.

Nofoaluma has been dropped. Laurie is dropped. Mamaulo is moved on. Doueihi has been shifted to fullback. Some might see this as desperation, some might question why these moves were not made before the season started. My take- I don't think the coaching staff know EXACTLY who is to keep or not. They have recruited well, despite the results. And the players brought in will help in the development of players I think are already earmarked as long-term solutions: Utoikamanu, Pole, Matamua, Toupo, Kepoeoa & Simpkin.

I expect we see more of Pole, Matamua & Simpkin as the year goes on. Bula is already being talked about, and I'd say we see him before the year is out. Toupo & Kepoeoa are already locked in.

Where are we in terms of club development? I know everyone thinks of 2005. I'd say we are somewhere between 2003-2004, where Sheens removed a bunch of the longer term players & made room for the Marshall's, Farah's, Gibbs, Fulton, Halatau's while bringing in the likes of Hodgson, Prince etc to balance out what we already had.

He's now stated they want an 'experienced half' (I read either #7 or #6 when they say that). Moses was THE target. Pearce was a fallback option. The answer MIGHT be George Williams. Or Sezar. Or Luke Keary. But that doesn't mean they give up on Brooks immediately either. I strongly believe that Sheens/Marshall/Farah BELIEVE in club spirit & keeping 'the old boys' around. Brooks has always been a Tiger. Moses & Tedesco have already been targeted for a return. You build a club spirit through players coming through a club, and despite his struggles, Brooks IS a Tigers player. I think they value that. I don't believe you can question his dedication on the field. His results? Sure. But it's not a lack of effort. That's the difference between him & the other long-term Tiger, Nofoaluma, who you CAN question his efforts of late.

Doueihi's extension for a year & shift to fullback kind of looks perfect for the timeframe for Bula to become the starter. He may then move on, or even be looked at as a future centre or even an eventual shift back to 5/8. But for mine, he's now a place holder (and a good enough option TBH) at fullback until Bula is ready.

I think it will be interesting to see which players get extended playing time over the next few weeks. I'm pretty confident we will start seeing the younger players incorporated into the squad more & more.

I'm still not giving up on a solid 9th finish once the players get a handle on the newer style of play. The club isn't ONLY combatting the failures of youth in the squad, but the ghosts of 5-6 years of having focused on one style of play (that didn't work) and has seemingly eroded the confidence of players completely (here's looking at YOU Luke Brooks).

They look like a team that needs unshackling. They play frustrated, because they know what they want to do, but it's not clicking. The day it does- the Tigers will put a SCORE on someone. They move up & down the field well now. The forwards are laying that foundation. It's not a huge jump to go from there to adding additional pressure, to breaking teams resolve & then to taking advantage of that. Good sides get all of that together. We are not there yet. But, we NOW have the ability to move up & down the field.
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Stop talking sense.
 
Eternal Tiger said:
You and the Coaching staff lost me when you said they haven't given up on Brooks. Enjoy his stellar 300 game WT career, wake the rest of us up when it's over.
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I know that we get angry at some of our favoured players that have been here for ages,but you know what really gets me is the simple bloody errors and penalties the idiots do...
THEY ARE PROFESSIONAL NRL PLAYERS ....I wish they would start performing as such.maybe we could have got a rollon and won a game or 2 this year...
 
twentyforty said:
Benji has 12 probables for 2025 so far. These are all his choices.
Benji has some experience as a player, but it would take something of a miracle to become a winning coach after 2 years. I’m not saying he won’t know what he’s doing, but there’s a gap between completing tasks and responsibilities and nailing it, winning enough games to sneak into the playoffs.
He needs to consider his succession plan for when Sheens and Farah leave. If he hasn’t done this already we may find ourselves starting another 5y plan 3 years into this current one?
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It will be a miracle if Benji makes it to 2025!!
 
Eternal Tiger said:
You and the Coaching staff lost me when you said they haven't given up on Brooks. Enjoy his stellar 300 game WT career, wake the rest of us up when it's over.
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I gave up on brooks 3 years ago. He’s a 6 and we haven’t got a halfback. Douihei is more a worry he’s given up.
 
I don't think I'll get over the Hastings/Brooks issue for a while.

We had a chance to dump:

1. The least successful player in NRL history;
2. Worst half in the league; and
3. Worst contract of all time,

not once, but twice. But what do we do? We instead dump the one guy who made us competitive last year.

We look like an absolute laughing stock this year despite making some great signings, because despite all that, we let go of and kept the wrong player at the most important position on the field.

We're at worst 2-3 and realistically 3-2 if we have Hastings in the 7 this year. Are we a contender? Absolutely not, but we're definitely not looking like specials for a second consecutive spoon. Even if we come 10th, that's a big improvement from 16th and signals a shift in the right direction.

Imagie you're Trindall or Pezet who's stuck behind successful halves pairings, do you want to come to the Tigers in this current state? A demoralised group who's going to cop it in the media. You're going be heaped on with the pressure of being the saviour and everything you do will be scrutinised. Better off playing another year in reserves and then just taking over at the current team.

Now imagine we still had Hastings. We can say to them "Look, we're on the way up but we're one piece away from being a contender. You might be that guy - come over to us, the 6 jersey is yours and don't worry about managing the team or the game, Jacko will handle all of that. All you've gotta do is play your natural game and try and get us some points".

That's an extremely appealing proposition for any talented young half.

The 5 year deal we gave Luke Brooks in 2018 set us back 5 years. Failing to get rid of him last year and choosing to instead move on Hastings might have set us back another 3 years. What our management has done, from the board, to Pascoe to Sheens, is bewildering, inexcusable and bordering on negligent.

No team in a salary cap competition should miss the finals for 13 consecutive years. In any given year, making the finals (when there was 16 teams) should in theory be a 50% chance where there is a salary cap and all teams are afforded equal spend (obviously not 50% in practice, but for this exercise lets say it is). To miss the finals 13 times in a row, or in other terms, if you were to flip a coin 13 times and get heads 13 times in a row, the probability is 1/8192. Pathetic.

I don't see how we can continue to be patient when there's no accountability. Sheens giving himself complete power over the club, signing a head coach for 2 years time who's completely untested, Lee Hagipantelis turning everything he touches to crap in his stupid fedora, Pascoe's everything and above all his haircut. Pascoe's salary is probably linked to the financial performance rather than the on-field performance of the club. It's almost a shame we're so profitable because he's probably laughing his way to the bank while our fans laugh only as an alternative to crying with how bad we're going. It's getting to the point where we need some pretty drastic fan action and we need to seriously look at overthrowing the board and management to get some fresh faces and ideas in.
 
It’s a badly balanced team. Our two highest paid players Douihei and Brooks should be dropped and our backs are not up to standard apart from a few. Teams go wide and score often, kick through as the fullback is asleep or lacks pace to get across. Our halves butcher very attacking play. We are easy to game plan against. The recruitment drive on the forwards last year has to be done on the spine and backs next year.
 
Lukic said:
I don't think I'll get over the Hastings/Brooks issue for a while.

We had a chance to dump:

1. The least successful player in NRL history;
2. Worst half in the league; and
3. Worst contract of all time,

not once, but twice. But what do we do? We instead dump the one guy who made us competitive last year.

We look like an absolute laughing stock this year despite making some great signings, because despite all that, we let go of and kept the wrong player at the most important position on the field.

We're at worst 2-3 and realistically 3-2 if we have Hastings in the 7 this year. Are we a contender? Absolutely not, but we're definitely not looking like specials for a second consecutive spoon. Even if we come 10th, that's a big improvement from 16th and signals a shift in the right direction.

Imagie you're Trindall or Pezet who's stuck behind successful halves pairings, do you want to come to the Tigers in this current state? A demoralised group who's going to cop it in the media. You're going be heaped on with the pressure of being the saviour and everything you do will be scrutinised. Better off playing another year in reserves and then just taking over at the current team.

Now imagine we still had Hastings. We can say to them "Look, we're on the way up but we're one piece away from being a contender. You might be that guy - come over to us, the 6 jersey is yours and don't worry about managing the team or the game, Jacko will handle all of that. All you've gotta do is play your natural game and try and get us some points".

That's an extremely appealing proposition for any talented young half.

The 5 year deal we gave Luke Brooks in 2018 set us back 5 years. Failing to get rid of him last year and choosing to instead move on Hastings might have set us back another 3 years. What our management has done, from the board, to Pascoe to Sheens, is bewildering, inexcusable and bordering on negligent.

No team in a salary cap competition should miss the finals for 13 consecutive years. In any given year, making the finals (when there was 16 teams) should in theory be a 50% chance where there is a salary cap and all teams are afforded equal spend (obviously not 50% in practice, but for this exercise lets say it is). To miss the finals 13 times in a row, or in other terms, if you were to flip a coin 13 times and get heads 13 times in a row, the probability is 1/8192. Pathetic.

I don't see how we can continue to be patient when there's no accountability. Sheens giving himself complete power over the club, signing a head coach for 2 years time who's completely untested, Lee Hagipantelis turning everything he touches to crap in his stupid fedora, Pascoe's everything and above all his haircut. Pascoe's salary is probably linked to the financial performance rather than the on-field performance of the club. It's almost a shame we're so profitable because he's probably laughing his way to the bank while our fans laugh only as an alternative to crying with how bad we're going. It's getting to the point where we need some pretty drastic fan action and we need to seriously look at overthrowing the board and management to get some fresh faces and ideas in.
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This is the way
#stressfreesemis
 
We now have people like Joey Johns saying he thought our guys gave up last night in the first half when we were already 28 nil down. Hard to argue based on the inept rubbish dished up.
 
tigerap said:
Just dropped this to our CEO...had to get this off my chest.....

Justin,

I don’t know if you remember me, you kindly invited me and my son Mathew to the Tigers box last year at CommBank Vs Penrith…we narrowly lost that game, but we enjoyed the day out.

What has gone wrong this year!?!...It seems everything. The talk amongst the fans and members is this club has gone backwards big time despite all the offseason hype.

As much as I hate NRL 360 and the bagging they dish out to the club, I’m beginning to believe they are justified!.

Players we let go last and this year have gone forward to bigger and better times with their new clubs, yet our new recruits have regressed.

We clearly are not playing as a team, there is no cohesion in attack, there is no line speed in defence. Teams easily move upfield when attacking us, yet we struggle to do the same. We can’t put a decent grubber in the in goal to put pressure in attack, we can’t defend short dropouts, we can’t get to our attacking short dropouts - I’m afraid this all comes down to coaching.

From my and many fans perspective I’m afraid there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Adam is NOT a fullback, Luke is NOT a halfback, Wakeham is a reserve grader, Nofo has lost interest and I can see plenty of others going the same way.

Frankly, despite all the hype, realistically, If we are lucky we will be 2-12 after 14 rounds this year.

From the last 20 games we have ONLY won 2! (2-18), WOW!....The Leichhardt Oval fortress is no more. , what terrible losses the opening 2 games this year...A second spoon awaits us odds on..

As the CEO I would like to see you address the fans and members about the very poor start to our 2023 season and how the club plans to work its way out of this, please, please no spin, just facts. We also want to know why our players are playing so poorly, it seems without any cohesion or coaching.

Good luck for the rest of the season, I bet you a $10 scratchy we are not better than 2-12 by round 14 , after which I’ll check out for the rest of 2023-24 as my heart can’t take this rubbish anymore.

Best Of luck
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Dearest Tigerap,

Thank you for your correspondence. I do remember you a your son coming to our box. I noted you both wore scarves and I was pleased. Have you purchased this years scarf? If not how many can I put you down for? We have pet scarfs now too! With Easter around the corner have you considered a scarf hunt instead of chocolate eggs?

With the actual team, I have little input into the day to day operation. As you can see from the half time footage of me in the change rooms, I actually don’t like footy and was playing candy crush instead of listening or contributing at all. FYI, I’m ranked 564th in Australia on candy crush. A stat I’m quite proud of. It took a lot of effort and persistence but I’m climbing the ranks fast. If you play candy crush you can add me as a friend and we can share scores. My tag is TheKandyMan69420.


Thanks again for you contact, always great to hear from scarves..I mean fans.

Yours humbly

J.Pascoe.

P.s the box invite wasn’t free, you owe us $390.00
 
Curaeus said:
We now have people like Joey Johns saying he thought our guys gave up last night in the first half when we were already 28 nil down. Hard to argue based on the inept rubbish dished up.
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A few of us made the same statement before halftime last night.
They did give up.
To their credit they did have a go in the second 40 but the damage was well and truly done by then.
 
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