It should have been the type of situation that would have any decent footballer licking their chops and reading for a big game.
Facing off against a weakened opponents. No captain, no on field general. Their back forward missing, their best backs missing. All that would be left is a couple of experienced club players and a bunch of kids.
Any half decent first grade Rugby League team would have gone through the Brisbane Broncos like a hot knife through butter on Friday night. The West Tigers, well, they barely got away with a win they clearly did not deserve.
The Tigers started the season out looking sharp. They looked like they would be one of the teams to beat, and skill, wow, they had it all over the park.
The problem is, you can’t just rely on skill to win your football games, so as opposition clubs ran into match fitness and got their own combination’s working, it eroded any advantage the West Tigers had.
The Tigers 16-14 win over the “Baby Broncos” showed why they are not any sort of threat for the 2010 NRL Premiership.
The inexperienced Broncos side got by on guts, determination and having a real go. What they did at times wasn’t pretty, but enthusiasm got them to the lead and they simply out worked the Tigers for 76 minutes.
They didn’t win, and boy did they deserve to win this one. These kids showed confidence against a very experienced side, and at the end of the day they just lacked that little bit of direction to get them over the line.
As for the Tigers, they should be ashamed of themselves. How they could celebrate winning that game is beyond me.
I don’t have any issues with how Robbie Farah or Benji Marshall. Both players are doing their best. Their job isn’t to grind out games. You can see the work they are putting in, they are doing their job.
In fact Benji Marshall, who is being forced to play at halfback right now, had a number of times in this game where he was looking for a forward to run onto the ball, and no one was there. No one at all.
Contrast that to the Broncos inexperienced forwards, always turning up…its a disgrace that this Tigers pack is so soft and unwilling to put in the effort needed to win.
For all the talk about some of the Tigers forwards, the likes of Chris Heighington, Gareth Ellis and Keith Galloway, not a single one of them troubles an opposition pack. When its time to grind the game away, the Tigers pack goes MIA and is no where to be seen.
When the West Tigers signed winger Lote Tuqiri to an absurd contract to see out the end of his career, I said that his $400,000 salary should have been spent buying some decent forwards. I copped grief for it early in the season, but now, I’m being proven to be right every single week.
There are far too many Tigers players getting by right now on reputations they didn’t even build. Its all well and good to get the pundits talking you up, but when what amounts to an Under 20’s side bashes you up for 76 minutes, you should be embarrassed by your performance.
