The Wests Tigers have announced that Tim Sheens will not coach the club in 2013. At this stage he is still an employee of the clubs though. That move will be to avoid having to pay out the remainder of his contract, something the club simply can not afford.
It has being reported that Sheens had finally lost the support of the playing group which isn’t really a big surprise when you consider the teams lacklustre end to the season and subsequent release of players like Beau Ryan, Chris Heighington and Blake Ayshford.
I think this is the best thing for both the Tigers and Sheens. The way they ended the season, they really did look like a club that needed a change of voice and a few new ideas.
Nathan Brown and Michael Potter are the two names that keep getting a big run in the media in terms of who who will replace Sheens as the Tigers head coach. Potter has been coaching the Bradford Bulls for free for the last few months after they went broke and Brown left the Huddersfield Giants mid season and had signed a deal with St Helens to coach them next year. Obviously that deal has an out clause if he gets a head coaching job in the NRL. Justin Morgan is the other name that is being floated around as a potential head coach in waiting.
Honestly, I don’t rate all three of them.
Brown had a very good St George/Illawarra Dragons side and didn’t do much with it. He was replaced by Wayne Bennett and the team when to a completely different level.
Potter had some success with the Catalan Dragons before heading to St Helens where things didn’t go all that well. He then moved to the Bradford Bulls where once again, things didn’t go all that well.
Morgan coached Hull KR and Super League and didn’t do all that much with them before coming back to Australia as an assistant coach under David Furner this year.
The problem the Tigers face is that there are no top class coaches available right now. The top coaches are either all locked up or still under contract heading into 2013.
I think now we will see Sheens head over to coach the New Zealand Warriors and I think he would do really well over there too. He would have all the talent he could want and a side that can play a bit of football too.
Considering they failed to make the finals, it has turned out to be a big week in Tiger Town!
