All Change at West Tigers

[Blotto]

Will this be the start of a new era for their long suffering Fans??

https://www.watoday.com.au/sport/entire-wests-tigers-board-dismissed-pascoe-resigns-as-ceo-20231212-p5eqy4.html

[Farmduck]

Probably not. Still got the same players who couldn't win a coin toss last year. Now Noff O'Luma is refusing to go to training or something. We have a new "centre of excellence" but no obvious evidence of any excellence. We've got the 3 Fainu brothers with their total NRL experience of 5 games between them so basically the 2024 season hinges on Aidan Sezer having the best year of his entire career.

On the bright side, we finally got rid of Luke Brooks. I've been a long-time Brooks critic, not because of any direct fault of his but because we paid him a ridiculous amount and always have, largely based (in his early years anyway) on this massive alleged potential which only ever appeared sporadically. Because of the vagaries of salary cap and minimum spend rules, Brooks, IMO, was soaking up money which could have been used to keep or buy other players. I'm sure Brooks will go well in '24 playing next to DCE but my point is that as long as we kept paying Brooks big $$$ we were never going to have the DCE we needed to get Brooks to play consistently well.

[Spotty Herbert]

If Wests season is dependent on Sezer, 2024 will be a very long year.

Surely the pack has to do better than last year : there are some decent players in Klemmer, Api, Utoikamanu (sp), Papalii and Bateman. Wonder if it would be worth playing Korisau at half back to manage the plays?

[Farmduck]

35 minutes ago, Spotty Herbert said:

If Wests season is dependent on Sezer, 2024 will be a very long year.

Surely the pack has to do better than last year : there are some decent players in Klemmer, Api, Utoikamanu (sp), Papalii and Bateman. Wonder if it would be worth playing Korisau at half back to manage the plays?

Of the players who played halves in 2023, Wakeham, Talau, Laurie and Brooks have all left so there is only Douehi who may not return from his 3rd ACL injury until Round 10. Sezer is our only experienced half for possibly the first half of the season. There is even some talk on the Wests forum that they may try to medically retire Douehi so that leaves us Latu Fainu who's 18 and has never played first grade.

If we move Koroisau to the halves that leaves Jake Simpkin who hasn't shown any above-adequate qualities thus far and Tallyn Da Silva who's also 18 but at least he's played 5 games off the bench, as our dummy-halves.

[Blotto]

That old adage that if it's wrong at the Top it will be wrong at the bottom was applicable to Tigers, so that welcome change at the top isn't going to make them a top 8 side next season but will give them the impetus to get away from the wooden spoon fight! The revolving door situation isn't about to slow down yet for Players and Club Management!

2025 is the season to see if it will be the start of onwards and upwards

[Spotty Herbert]

15 hours ago, Farmduck said:

Of the players who played halves in 2023, Wakeham, Talau, Laurie and Brooks have all left so there is only Douehi who may not return from his 3rd ACL injury until Round 10. Sezer is our only experienced half for possibly the first half of the season. There is even some talk on the Wests forum that they may try to medically retire Douehi so that leaves us Latu Fainu who's 18 and has never played first grade.

If we move Koroisau to the halves that leaves Jake Simpkin who hasn't shown any above-adequate qualities thus far and Tallyn Da Silva who's also 18 but at least he's played 5 games off the bench, as our dummy-halves.

That's the definition of being between a rock and a hard place. Hadn't realised that Wakeham had gone, although that probably makes things better. Benji to put his boots back on and be Captain Coach?

[Farmduck]

Quote

After reports on Saturday morning filtered through that Jarome Luai would be leaving the Panthers to join the Tigers on a five-year, $6 million deal, the Panthers playmaker has taken to social media stating he has yet to make anything official.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nrl-premiership/teams/tigers/nrl-2023-jarome-luai-signs-five-year-deal-with-wests-tigers-penrith-panthers-contract/news-story/5f830caab16deecbad520c3955238b82

Luai's comment could mean anything: “No pen to paper here. I’ll let yous know when a deal is done”. I could interpret that to mean a few different things, and I'm fluent in Bogan, having lived in Blacktown for more than 30 years. Still not happy with this modern spelling of "yous." Prefer the more traditional "youse" or the complete form "youse c***s"

[Midlands hobo]

Any team that thinks Bateman will be their saviour has more than playing issues.

[Irish Saint]

Jarome Luai leaving the Panthers for Wests Tigers?

Edited December 16, 2023 by Irish Saint

[Anita Bath]

1 hour ago, Irish Saint said:

Jarome Luai leaving the Panthers for Wests Tigers?

Perhaps more accurately put, Luai leaving the panthers for a shed load of money. He would have signed for Rochdale Hornets if they had offered him 6 million for 5 years.