Now it is down largely to one man to stop the slide – and reverse it.

Shane Richardson has been here before. The Queenslander ran South Sydney from 2004 to 2015, transforming the Rabbitohs, backed by Russell Crowe, James Packer and now Mike Cannon-Brookes – from a bottom-of-the-barrel club to premiership winners.

He made similar changes to the Penrith Panthers and Cronulla Sharks in the 1990s and early 2000s.

He comes with a no-frills – and sometimes divisive – attitude.

“Business people, they take their head off and put a pumpkin on. They think they know all about running a sports organisation,” he says.

“They want to become the players’ mates. I don’t want to ever be a player’s mate. I don’t want to go to their funerals. But I want their respect.

“These people think you should ingratiate yourself with the players and invite them to parties.”

The path back to the top is fraught. Richardson has some grand plans. He wants to move stadiums, find new sponsors and rebuild the fan base – by making a pivot away from Leichhardt, and the storied home of the Balmain Tigers – toward the booming suburbs in Sydney’s south-west.

He is not afraid to burn some bridges to go there.

“Las Vegas was a f---ing disaster, and it was a party trip for everybody,” Richardson says of the NRL’s big growth plan. “I don’t want to go. At the end of the day, it’s about the business [of the club]. I’m all about rugby league and … those little Christmas cakes don’t make any difference to the game at all.”

Former NRL chief executive David Gallop remembers the last time the Wests Tigers won the premiership.

“I remember going back to Balmain and the euphoria was next level,” he says. “It was a real-life example of the importance of the salary cap and our key strategy of running an even competition.”

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Like similar measures in other games, the NRL’s salary cap is meant to spread out the playing talent to ensure that the wealthiest clubs don’t monopolise the competition. It is meant to keep the game embedded in the community.

The club has had seven coaches since sacking premier-winning coach Tim Sheens, with its former star player Benji Marshall taking over last year.

Whether it is poor performance, or something else, Wests Tigers’ membership – its connection to its local community – has slumped.

Last year, the club claimed to have 20,000 members. After Richardson arrived, he forced the club to correct the record. That figure included thousands of juniors who don’t contribute any income to the club.

The real number of paying members was just 8807 – a smaller figure than 2015.

Membership revenue has barely moved in a decade. In 2015, the Wests Tigers made $1.1 million from 9347 members. Last year, despite reporting memberships of 20,119, it made $1.4 million.

“It’s not about rugby league,” Richardson says. “What does this brand stand for? The brand stands for community. You don’t buy a membership to get a ticket to sit down, it’s because you want to be part of the family.”

But membership also brings in much-needed funding. Richardson wants the number of paying members to reach 13,000 by 2025.

To achieve this, he wants to a build sophisticated database of everyone from members to anyone who has attended a match or bought Wests Tigers merchandise.

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Richardson says there are only 15,000 in Wests Tigers’ database, compared to nearly 400,000 at the South Sydney Rabbitohs. That’s where Shaun Mielekamp, the former chief executive of the Central Coast Mariners and a former Rabbitohs executive, comes in. He’s the new general manager of community.

“Everyone who connects with the club – whether they come to a game, have gone to a community clinic, bought merchandise or entered a competition, we need to capture the data and have the right conversation,” Mielekamp says. “It’s as simple as that.”

Getting new members requires meeting new people. Mielekamp is responsible for building a fan base in Sydney’s south, where the population is booming, a strategy that began with the opening of new headquarters in Campbelltown this month.

“It’s about making a real difference in the community. That way memberships are growing … regardless of team performance,” he says. “It is troops on the ground. It’s literally every kid that shakes a hand, looks at a player, and gets inspired to be better in life.”

If Mielekamp and Richardson are successful, it will go some way to repairing the Wests Tigers’ struggling finances.

Like most clubs, it mainly makes money through grants provided by the NRL, and the proceeds of broadcast deals with Foxtel and Nine Entertainment, the owner of The Australian Financial Review.

And while it earns revenue from corporate sponsors, it remains reliant on funding from Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, which is majority-owned by Holman Barnes Group.

Arguably this is Richardson’s biggest task – improving sponsorship revenue, so the club is not reliant on its shareholders for funding.

“The business side – that was a challenge,” Mr Richardson says. “We weren’t telling the truth about where our membership was, our corporate [revenue] was the lowest level of anybody in Sydney.

“We had no plans about where we were going in the [Sydney] south-west … we just lacked direction.”

According to the Tigers’ strategic plan, released to members this month, Richardson plans to grow membership revenue from $1.3 million in 2023 to $2.2 million by the end of next year, and sponsorship revenue from $6.6 million to $8.5 million.

He is forecasting a $200,000 loss for 2025, compared to a $2.2 million loss in the 12 months to the end of October.

“We’ve been losing money, which is something I don’t want to do,” Richardson says. “I want us to run on our own two feet. The corporate sponsorship would be 40 per cent of what Souths do.”

Richardson says there is also already interest from at least two new corporate sponsors prepared to pay market prices to have their brands on the Wests Tigers’ jersey.

Brydens Lawyers, run by the club’s former chairman, Lee Hagipantelis, is the $1 million-a-year jersey sponsor. The deal ends this season, but Brydens has last right of refusal.

“We’ve got two sponsors interested in coming on … we’ve gone to the marketplace and upgraded all of our sponsorship to the level that it should be,” Richardson says. “You can’t just accept that if you’ve gone terrible, then business is terrible.”

Coates, a long-time Wests Tigers supporter and donor, believes Richardson is the kind of executive the club needs.

“I’ve only met him a few times … but he impresses me,” he says. “What I like is the emphasis on producing our own players. We have produced and lost players … but there is massive potential in south-west Sydney. It’s a region that should be tapped.”

Leichhardt Oval was the ground where, in April 1957, the first rugby league match was broadcast – a 12-10 win to the Balmain Tigers over Canterbury Bankstown.

In the 1970s, long before State of Origin, Leichhardt was hosting showdowns between NSW and Queensland.

Now, despite it being their home ground, the Wests Tigers barely play there. This season, only five of 12 home games will be played there, with the rest at Campbelltown Stadium and Western Sydney stadium, because of concerns about the facilities.

Richardson is threatening to pull Wests Tigers from Leichhardt, their spiritual home, altogether, if the NSW government doesn’t hand over some funding that has otherwise been earmarked for a stadium upgrade in Penrith.

He has made, and carried out, similar threats before, relocated South Sydney’s home games from Allianz Stadium at Moore Park to Accor Stadium at Sydney Olympic park.

“If you look at the great clubs, they have great stadiums. We are playing at broken down Leichhardt ... we need to play bigger stadiums to grow our crowds and our corporate side,” he says.

Coates, who was involved in the development of Campbelltown Stadium and Olympic Stadium, knows what needs to be done.

“My heart says Leichhardt,” he says. “But the future is in the south-west, and that’s where we’ve got to take the game.”

Those grand plans face one major hurdle. Richardson’s future. The Wests Tigers chief executive is only on a six-month contract, technically employed by another company, and in demand.

“Richo brings an unparalleled track record of building footy clubs and managing stakeholders like player agents, coaching staff, and the roster,” Gallop says.

“The growth corridor of Campbelltown-Macarthur [in Sydney’s south-west] is such a great opportunity for the future of the club while maintaining the important historical links to Balmain.”

While Richardson says he’s still discussing an extension of his contract, other clubs are circling. The Rabbitohs, for one, want him back, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

If Richardson leaves, it would almost certainly mean the end of the Wests Tigers’ long-term strategy.

Wests Ashfield own 75 per cent of the club, and Balmain own the rest, but there has been plenty of animosity on the board. Pascoe, the former chief executive, says he had drafted his resignation long before the review that led to his exit because he felt hamstrung by the club’s board.

As part of the review, Wests Ashfield agreed there should be three independent directors. Who they are hasn’t been decided.

“They need to appoint the additional three independent directors,” Coates says. “Governance is a taken. You have to have a board that’s independent, particularly with all these stakeholders.”

Richardson wants to know who is he answerable to before committing to three more years. If that’s not an option, he wants a clause in place that allows him to quit if he doesn’t get autonomy.

“I’m not putting my name on the line if they’re not going appoint an independent board. Any contract I sign is about true corporate governance,” he says.

Last weekend, the Wests Tigers lost for the fourth time in six games, this time to the Penrith Panthers. The week before, the club lost to St George Illawarra Dragons in what Marshall described as the team’s worst performance of the season.

For Richardson, at least, the on-field performance is improving. “[On-field] was the easy part,” he says. “This is the hard part.