Hope springs eternal as Wests Tigers work ‘to get off the NRL’s ground floor’

O ut at Wests Tigers HQ there’s not much doing. No players running drills. No fans waiting for selfies. No camera crews hovering. It’s just me, a skinny Burmese cat and New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet slinking around (the latter “just passing by”). These are the chilly winds which greet a side that loses three straight to start the season and hasn’t played finals since 2011.

Turns out the turf, much like the team, is under renovation so the Tigers are training in an adjacent park that, in 1793, was once the old Longbottom convict stockade - a barracks, refuge and home base for a long line of rebels, escapees and enforcers. Together as a gang, these exiles worked the lands of what is today the industrial hub of Tigerland, sharing every season of boom and bust and, when deemed ‘men of good character’, winning freedom.

Can Wests Tigers break their shackles in 2023? On Friday they head to Melbourne for rugby league’s toughest assignment: beating Craig Bellamy’s Storm on home turf. Few give them a chance of victory. The last time it happened was 2018, when they defeated Melbourne twice in five weeks. Ivan Cleary was coach, Benji Marshall was captain and the Tigers won three straight to start the year. They haven’t won three in a row since.

Nevertheless, there is something dangerous bubbling behind the scenes at Wests Tigers: hope.

Hope arrived when Tim Sheens, 73, signed as a second-coming coach after his 2003-12 reign delivered a 2005 premiership, 2010 preliminary final and 2011 semi-final. Hope grew when the club moved to a new $78m heartland base in November. And it sprang eternal when 2005 title hero and prodigal son Marshall was announced to succeed Sheens as coach in 2025.

The pre-season rumblings out of