Wests Tigers chief executive Shane Richardson addresses Tallyn Da Silva departure
The Tigers could have dug in their heels and made Tallyn Da Silva honour the final 18 months of his deal, but Shane Richardson gave a commitment to young star’s family that sealed his exit from the club.
Wests Tigers chief executive Shane Richardson says the decision to prioritise the signing of Api Koroisau over the retention of Tallyn Da Silva was about leadership, loyalty and giving the club the best chance to win now.
A matter of weeks after allowing Lachlan Galvin to leave the club, Richardson made another huge call last week when he granted promising hooker Da Silva permission to explore his options on the open market.Da Silva, regarded in some quarters as a budding superstar,
opted to join Parramatta after a bidding war involving a handful of clubs, a sign of the regard in which he is held around the NRL.
In an ideal world, the Tigers would have kept Koroisau and Da Silva. Richardson insists that was never a realistic proposition given the strain it would have placed on the club’s salary cap and the youngster’s desire to be a first grade hooker.
Once the Tigers made the decision to retain Koroisau, Da Silva’s fate was sealed. He and his family had made it clear in meetings with Richardson that he wasn’t ready to sit behind Koroisau for another three years.
“I told the family that we wouldn’t hold him if Api re-signed,” Richardson said.
“The kid wants to play NRL and I think he can. We had to make a decision for the betterment of the club.
“We want to win games now and the kid didn’t want to hang around for another two or three years waiting to get his shot at first grade.
“It was also a cultural thing about leadership with Api – that we wanted him to finish his time at the club.
“It was about the young kid and doing the right thing by him … and the right thing by his family. Once we decided we were going to re-sign Api, it would have been wrong of us to hold him back.”
Richardson knows some Tigers fans will be frustrated with the departure of Da Silva so soon after Galvin left the club.
The Tigers could have dug in their heels and made Da Silva honour the final 18 months of their deal but Richardson had given a commitment and he wanted to honour it.
“You talk about honesty with players – I was honest with his parents and they were honest with us,” Richardson said.
“He made it clear that he wanted to stay but the bottom line was from the club point of view, he was not going to be the first grade hooker next year.
“The amount of money he was on – it was too much money to have as your back-up hooker in the cap. We would have had two hookers that would have cost us $1.35 million.
“How is that smart business? We need a quality strike centre and we need a quality second rower. It (Taylan) May comes good, we have our quality centre.
“(Kai) Pearce—Paul is our back rower. It is a calculated thing but we put a lot of thought into it.
“At the end of the day we made the decision and it would be dishonest of us to hold the kid back when we made the decision to go with Api.
“We have had to reshape the cap completely. Last year, we had 22 of the 36 players that you could really say were NRL players.
“Losing a good player like Tallyn Da Silva is not ideal but in shaping of the cap and getting people in the right positions to make us successful, it’s important.”
Crucially, the Tigers have another young hooker coming through the lower grades in Jared Haywood, who played for the Australian schoolboys last year.
He should be ready for first grade when Koroisau is coming to the end of his career. The more immediate priority for Richardson and the Tigers is to get a deal finalised with Koroisau.
The club’s co-captain is off contract at the end of next season but talks have begun and Richardson is confident that Koroisau is going nowhere.
“I have spoken to Api and his management – he wants to be here,” Richardson said.
“It’s just down to dollars and cents. Yeah I have taken a bit of a risk but I won’t take a risk when it comes to judging character.
“I have known Api since Souths. I know he doesn’t want to go anywhere, I know his wife is incredibly happy here and does not go anywhere.
“We’ll get the deal done.”
Asked why the club had made Koroisau their priority, Richardson said: “There is an aspect of loyalty – we haven’t always shown that.
“Api stuck with us when we were terrible. Now he’s got blokes around him who can do the job, his job will become different as we go forward.
“Really it’s about leadership. You can’t have enough senior leaders in a young group of players. So to let Api go – it would have been a bad statement for the club.
“If Api stayed, the kid wanted to go. So you would have had an unhappy situation there. It was a big decision but both Benji and I were on the same page.
“We need Api, we’re loyal to Api but more importantly, he’s playing well and we need the senior leadership.”
