In a shocking performance, the Wests Tigers have gone down 28 points to 23 against the Gold Coast titans.
Yes, that’s right, the Tigers found a way to lose to a team that hasn’t managed to win a game in nearly a full calendar year. I can’t put into words how disappointing that game was, but here it goes.
Nothing has changed.
Year after year after year, The Tigers find a way to break the hearts of their fans and lose to teams that they should be beating at crucial points in the season.
The Tigers let down their fans tonight with a terrible performance that proves all the talk about the team becoming a mentally tougher unit is a fairy tale.
The Gold Coast Titans to their credit played well, but a genuine top 8 team would have won comfortably against them.
The club needs to have a good hard look at tonight’s performance and address why results like these keep happening because we as fans deserve so much better than what they dished out tonight.
With teams like the Newcastle Knights inspiring the Rugby League community with their commitment and steel-will in recent weeks, it’s disappointing as a Tigers fan to hear all the talk that just isn’t translating onto the field from the club
The Tigers won’t make the 8 this year.
I’m calling it now; tonight’s performance has shown that nothing has changed in the offseason for the Tigers.
With a shortened season and with the fact that we are playing Canberra next week, it was absolutely crucial that we pick up the two points tonight.
It breaks my heart, but year after year of missing the finals by a slim margin has taught me that games like these will come back to bite the Tigers when it’s all said and done and the team has nobody to blame but themselves.
Even after 77 minutes of horrible footy, the Tigers managed to put themselves in a position to win but a lapse in concentration, focus, and perhaps knowledge of the rules allowed the Titans another chance.
The Tigers had a chance to ice the game on 3 separate occasions but simply weren’t good enough to put away one of the historically worst teams of the NRL era.
If the Tigers can’t put away the Titans, what kind of result will we see against teams like the Eels, South Sydney and the Penrith who we play twice.
Lack of leadership
When the Titans had momentum, Tigers fans were looking to see who would step up and besides Benji Marshall with the field goal, absolutely nobody did.
The Tigers were playing like they were just trying to protect a lead rather than looking to actually seal which is exactly the reason why they let the Titans back into the match, not once, not twice but three times. The leadership group of the club needs to address these issues.
The Tigers continue to leak easy points.
Once again the Tigers defense looked ordinary leaking in some soft tries. The tries to Keegan Hipgrave and Kevin Procter were just soft.
The Kicking game was terrible.
Tonight was the worst game Luke Brooks has played in a while but it was the two playmakers kicking games that really shot the Tigers in the foot tonight.
The Tigers just couldn’t find the right kick all night and gave away multiple 7-tackle sets.
The attack in general also looked terrible when the Tigers didn’t have momentum going their way which is a massive worry for the team.
Grant and Doueihi were the only players that can hold their heads up.
I thought that despite the terrible team performance, both young players tried their guts out.
Grant carved up out of dummy half and Adam Doueihi scored a try, set up a try assist, made 1-line break, registered 7 tackle breaks, and ran for 189 meters.
David Nofoaluma also had a strong game but made some crucial mistakes that impacted the final score greatly
The Bench provided no impact.
For the second week in a row, the bench didn’t make any impact. Although Oliver Clarke is more durable than players like Zane Musgrove for example, the Tigers are missing some major go forward when Thomas Mikaela and Josh Aloiai went off the field.
Alex Seyfarth is a rookie and Chris Lawrence isn’t at a point in his career where he can swing a game in your favor.
A player like Musgrove out their tonight would have given the team some much-needed punch and go forward up the middle.
Not enough go-forward from the forwards.
The only Tigers forwards that ran for more than 100 meters were Josh Aloiai with 114 meters and Harry Grant with 102 meters.
Compare that number to the Titans who had Moeaki Fotuaika ran for 217 meters and Jai arrow who ran for 150 meters, it’s clear that the middle-men didn’t lay a good enough platform tonight.
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