Wests Tigers Future: The Magpies Resurgence and NRL Legacy

An open letter to Roy Masters

Dear Roy, regarding your opinion piece titled The Party Pies and Blazers May be Gone, but are Wests Tigers Fixed? published in the SMH, 13/12/2023. The short answer is that they are indeed fixed – in the same way that family pets are. The Wests Tigers future can be better. But a single permanent home base needs to be established and I would argue, the joint venture needs to be annulled.

Given the current situation with the Tigers, this part of your opinion piece stands out the most to me:

“With O’Farrell as chairman and Stapleton the only director retained from the old Wests Tigers board, it signals the divide between the 1908 foundation clubs is dead. Wests retains control but trusts the Tigers to run the interim show. Old Magpies doubt whether Balmain would have been as magnanimous if the tables had been reversed. The same Wests loyalists would prefer the whole joint venture to be dissolved and the club rebadged Magpies. But the NRL would never consent to this and, in any case, a whole generation of fans has grown up knowing the club only as Wests Tigers.”

It looks like the Divide has done a Lazarus, or was, in the words of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride, only mostly dead. It may yet turn out to be the Monster that ate Leichhardt.

Although my gut has always told me you are right – that the NRL has a set against the Magpies name and legacy – the power of the press and of the people can sometimes change institutional thinking. I do wonder if a form of post code discrimination – bordering on class discrimination – is not behind anti-Magpie bias. The NRL after all, tries continually to market the sows ear*** as a silk purse by pushing a family-friendly image – one that is antithetical to the alleged thuggery of the Magpies in the Masters/Raudonikis eras, and belied by every off-season headline.

The one thing that I take umbrage at is in regard to the last comment that a whole generation has grown up knowing the club as Wests Tigers. Many more than a single generation grew up only knowing Balmain Tigers and Western Suburbs Magpies. We were told to suck it up – and initially did so. However, as google confirms, we have had 10 years of being reminded we are in the middle of a rebuild and need to be patient. That rebuild shows no signs of having any end-date.

In that same time period, the disdain shown to the Magpies side of the joint venture – particularly by the club itself and by the media, has been palpable. I’ll spare you the examples, because worse still is the flagrant disregard of the biggest nursery in the comp – a nursery that cries out for a team that will plant roots in the district and give its youth something to aspire to. That was the real heart of the old Magpies and it shone through in kids like the McGuinness brothers among many others. Platitudes don’t cut it. Pathways to city clubs don’t cut it. Mixed messages and continual name changes in the juniors don’t cut it.

I implore you to put your considerable influence to work and advocate for a return of the Magpies – based at Campbelltown. GIVE THE AREA WHAT IT DESERVES, IN RETURN FOR WHAT IT GIVES THE NRL. If that proves to be too big a mountain, the next best result would be for the Wests Tigers to be based there. Despite still having the old ties to a dead weight from the city, it would at least garner better results on the field than we have seen in a long time. That second option – though not really a win – is at least better than being mostly dead.

***_{Yes, I am comparing the NRL to a sow’s ear. Some of us appreciate both the beauty and the toughness of a sow’s ear. Union is welcome to the silk purse. I think they were born with it sticking out of one orifice or another.}