Tigers v Sharks - a perspective

Tiger_heart

Tiger_heart

Well-known member
Quite impressed by the Sharks last night, in their win against the Raiders, all things considered. It got me thinking though about their squad vs ours.

Whilst they have some really good players, to me the overall "value" of their squad, on paper, is not that much greater than ours. I stress on paper because that is not where games our won. However it is probably the closest top 8 team where I would consider them a valid comparison. Granted they have been together for a few years, but they have also managed to be consistent in that period, and some credit must go to Fitzgibbon for this.

I don't want to speculate about their premiership ambition, but rather your opinion as to whether the comparison holds and what the main differences between the teams are. For one thing, they seem to be very methodical, patient and able to defend solidly over prolonged periods of time.
 
I reckon the strength of a club's pathways largely dictate their direction, sustainability and competitiveness.
A club like the Wests Tigers has to work at a foundational level (rebuild) while most other clubs are just managing (roster) turnovers.
www.sharks.com.au

Sharks in rarefied air with five senior teams in finals

In an outstanding achievement which highlights the strength of the club's pathways, the Sharks are the only team to qualify for the finals in all five senior competitions this season.
www.sharks.com.au www.sharks.com.au
 
I keep reading that rugby league is much more about your weakest players than other sports - which, across the season, means everyone down to about number 25 or 26 in the roster. Simplifying, but if you have first grade standard players across the lineup and can survive the inevitable injuries without having to play anyone who is palpably not up to the standard, you're a good chance.

The Sharks seem to be a decent example of this: they're not laden with superstars but they're strong 1-17 and remain so even with a few players out. There's no soft spot in the lineup and no obvious weakness to attack. The Storm are similar but in an even more extreme way: they can lose big star players like Hughes and Papenhuysen, and have another 900k of cap room delivering nothing in NAS, and still beat top four teams in finals games - because their depth is endless.

This is why I think the next focus for the Tigers has to be making unflashy, cheap but genuinely first grade standard depth signings. We're not "one star away" - we're about half a dozen middle ranking first grade players who can come off the bench or come into the team without the overall quality dropping off a cliff.
 
Lauren said:
I reckon a club's pathways largely dictate their direction, sustainability and competitiveness.
A club like the Wests Tigers has to work at a foundational level (rebuild) while most other clubs are just managing (roster) turnovers.
www.sharks.com.au

Sharks in rarefied air with five senior teams in finals

In an outstanding achievement which highlights the strength of the club's pathways, the Sharks are the only team to qualify for the finals in all five senior competitions this season.
www.sharks.com.au www.sharks.com.au
Click to expand...
This is also true and it relates to my point above. Long term, you can't be paying free agent wages to your 15th-25th best players - even those 200-300k salaries are double minimum wage and when so much money is going on your stars you need as many functional minimum wagers as possible. The only way to get those is to produce your own (or steal other people's before they get to first grade, but that's not really feasible for a non-destination club).

It's not the sexiest bit of roster building but it's absolutely critical - and it's something all the teams that are consistently good share. There's always another guy who can come in and not let the team down.
 
Biggest advantage is location and lifestyle , players from that area or others I. Sydney like to live down that way so they are better at retention and have that tangible something to offer other than money and because shire is own region there is more passion.

Tigers , eels , dogs , dragons , souths , roosters are all competing same region , so business connections and money are defining factors
 
2041 said:
This is also true and it relates to my point above. Long term, you can't be paying free agent wages to your 15th-25th best players - even those 200-300k salaries are double minimum wage and when so much money is going on your stars you need as many functional minimum wagers as possible. The only way to get those is to produce your own (or steal other people's before they get to first grade, but that's not really feasible for a non-destination club).

It's not the sexiest bit of roster building but it's absolutely critical - and it's something all the teams that are consistently good share. There's always another guy who can come in and not let the team down.
Click to expand...
Agree
Depth is another huge part of that pathways strength. Clubs with multiple feeder teams, like the Queensland sides, can seamlessly replace departing players because their system develops ready made talent.
 
Would be great to have the consistency that the Sharks have. They might not always be out and out contenders, but they are very reliable when it comes to making the 8. They make far more often than they miss.
 
The overall success of the Sharks through all grades shows the quality of their depth & the development of their future plans are in place.

I think a few have said similar things without saying the same thing- we need that quality of depth through the grades. We probably have a top grade squad able to compete with most teams & get the club fighting for finals football.

But we are shallow in our options if we lose a player through injury or signing elsewhere. As a few have said, boring but solid depth additions are almost as vital right now to a flashy top grade player. If we can look at our KOE squad and find 7-8 players that CAN step in to 1st grade without everyone expecting them to struggle- we are about there.

If our junior squads are then pushing more players into being competitive for KOE selection...we are even closer.

Success breeds success. We need to continue being good to very good in SG Ball, Harold Matts etc. We need to pick out the best 40% of those guys & move them through the ranks into KOE & hopefully NRL.

And we need a KOE squad that has players EARNING a call-up to 1st grade, not having a shot at 1st grade because we lack anybody else.
 
They are a super structured team, that relies on players doing their job within the structure. It’s is also built on discipline and rock solid defence. No super stars and no weak links. They also seem to have a very good pathways program that churns out a lot of potential NRL players.

I think with our squad it’s probably a good club to look to and try and copy
 
Sharks are one of the best run clubs in the league. The geographical size of their catchment is small but they are constantly producing high quality NRL level players. They are run well on the financial side of things too with multiple private investments performing well.

Meanwhile, we had a CEO who got himself suspended for 6 months which got us a salary cap penalty. Then we decided to bring him back after that and keep him on for another 5 years. Things seemed to be doing okay stakeholder-wise, but it turned out he was fudging the numbers to make our reach seem better than it was. So overall it's been a shitshow.

I know it's been quoted a million times, but Jack Gibson said it best: "Winning starts in the front office."
 
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Differences ...

Sharks wear - black, white & blue,
we wear - black, white & orange.

Sharks have one home ground,
we have quite a few.

Sharks represent a well defined district,
we don’t

Sharks keep playing into September,
we don’t!

——————

The most glaring similarity however, is that the Cronulla Sharks & Wests Tigers will both be watching this years grand final from the bleachers.
 

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As much as Wests Tigers fans hate to admit it, we are currently behind the top 8 teams due to our highly paid key players, strike players, game breakers being well behind these same players at the top 8 clubs.
We love to blame the likes of Alex Twal and Alex Seyfarth, does anyone really believe it would have made any difference to last nights result if the Sharks had Alex Twal playing 13 instead of Jesse Colquhoun ?
Pole or Sione Fainu are just as good as Braden Hamlin-Uele as a bench player and although Briton Nikora is a far superior player to Alex Seyfarth, he only played limited minutes last night and had minimal effect on the game, nothing that Alex Seyfarth could not have done had he been in that same position.
 
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I think it was very noticeable the depth of the sharks park stood out last night and is probably where Canberra fell short.
They played AFB long minutes last night out of necessity and he managed it. It wasn’t a regular thing. Their pack is deeper and more effective than ours even in the 1-17. Missing from last nights game Kaufusi and McInnes. Take 2 of our starters out of our pack.
 
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