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Opinion
After years of painful losing seasons and a revolving door of recruitment duds, Wests Tigers have shown in a short space of time that they are in the finals equation.
They rallied from an 18-6 deficit to run in four unanswered tries to sink the Dolphins in Redcliffe on Saturday night to make it two wins from three starts but also show that they have no weak links across the park for the first time in a very long time.
Cronulla were not just too clinical but also too flamboyant for an overmatched Rabbitohs side at Shark Park as they cruised to a 27-12 triumph with Braydon Trindall orchestrating plenty of slick attacking raids.
Gold Coast brought Newcastle’s unbeaten start to the season to a shuddering halt at Cbus Super Stadium to chalk up a rousing 26-6 victory.
Do you believe in unlikelihoods? In the words of Dodgeball commentator extraordinaire Cotton McKnight, the Tigers can start dreaming of the playoffs.
The NRL’s longest finals drought, stretching back to 2011, is in serious danger not just because they have improved to 2-1 but Wests have a resilience to them now in the middle of the ruck and some class out wide.
Their creativity from Lachie Galvin and Jarome Luai’s budding halves combination to the one-two hooker punch of Api Koroisau and Tallyn Da Silva, with Jahream Bula lurking from the back has the potential to put plenty of points on the board in 2025.
They registered their first try after a Galvin half break was followed by a spread for their key recruit on the wing, Sunia Turuva, to finish.
Da Silva shouldn’t have been able to score from close range just before half-time but that try was crucial because it pegged the gap back to six.
Sunia Turuva. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
The Tigers hung tough, words that haven’t often been used to describe them in recent years, and they were rewarded when Turuva again unveiled his elite finishing qualities after Galvin’s long pass created space.
Alex Seyfarth puts them in front from a simple crash play close to the line before Koroisau sealed the win with an incisive solo scoot.
Benji Marshall was proud of the way his team fought back from 12 points down in hostile territory.
“We held their team to zero in the second half, that was probably the most pleasing thing,” he said.
“I love the team that we have in terms of the people – the way they act off the field and you add that to what they do on the field and I’m happy with the way they’re going.
“To keep fighting, that’s the main thing. As a coach, that’s what you want them to do is fight to the death. Defensively in the second half that’s as good as we’ve ever been.”
A knee injury to winger Jeral Skelton, who limped off in the second half, was the only sour note to the Tigers’ triumph.
Panic time. Well, not quite. Premierships aren’t won in March but finals campaigns can go kaput in the opening month of the season.
After losing their first three matches, the Dolphins are in dire straits and they did themselves no favours as they squandered their 18-6 advantage with some soft goal-line defence and poor options to bomb certain tries.
The Dolphins dominated early and they scored the first try with Herbie Farnworth providing the final pass for Jack Bostock to touch down in the corner.
Farnworth finished off the second one when he went infield looking for the ball to capitalise on a clever interchange between Kodi Nikorima and Daniel Saifiti.
At 18-6 they should have been able to keep their noses in front even though Nikorima’s try was highly dubious given that he was grounded short of the line and propelled himself over it as he tried to wriggle out of Jarome Luai’s tackle.
Rookie coach Kristian Woolf believes their first win is just around the corner but with the Broncos, Panthers and Storm among their next four opponents along with the Titans, their short-term prospects are looking grim.
“There’s no panic stations. I’ve been in this position before, so have most of the players,” he said.
“We’re not a mile off, we did a lot of good things tonight but we’ve got to stop beating ourselves and once we do that we’ll be a much better footy side.
“A big call in the game was when we had a penalty in the second half and needed to take the two. We will make sure we do that in future. It was probably the biggest turning point. That was on me.
“We were on the back foot for a lot of that second half and didn’t quite know how to fight our way out of it.”
When it comes to beating up on teams who are unlikely to make the playoffs, Cronulla are one of the surest things in the NRL.
Their problem is that when the lights are at their brightest in September, they struggle to get the edge over the Panthers and Storm sides of this NRL world.
But it would be doing them a disservice to say this was just a walk in the park over a lesser opponent.
They played with flair, scoring a couple of long-range tries – a length of the field effort finished off by Kayal Iro and another from deep inside their own territory for Iro to set up fullback Will Kennedy.
At 20-0 after the first half-hour the contest was all but over and any doubt was erased five minutes into the second period when Braydon Trindall’s momentum carried him to the stripe.
He is more and more becoming their dominant playmaker ahead of Nicho Hynes and if the late bloomer continues his rapid upward trajectory, the Sharks could indeed compete with the benchmark teams at the business end of the year.
“I’m really enjoying watching them grow,” Fitzgibbon said when asked about his halves duo.
“It was always our plan that they’ll grow together and just because the six had a good game, does that mean the seven had a bad game? It’s a combination – one week if one will shine the other might be a support act.
“If that happens, they’re playing for the team. They’re doing what the team needs at that particular time. They both played strongly today.”
Braden Hamlin-Uele (knee), hooker Blayke Brailey (thigh) and Siosifa Talakai (ankle) failed to finish the match but Fitzgibbon was unsure of the severity of their damage.
South Sydney fans were starting to believe again in the Wayne Bennett magic touch a second time around after they upset the Dolphins and Dragons in the opening two rounds.
But with Cameron Murray and Latrell Mitchell in the casualty ward, they were never going to be in the hunt against the Sharks.
Mitchell will be back soon but Murray is unlikely to play this season with his torn Achilles but even when they get their star fullback on the park, it is hard to see Souths being genuine top-four contenders.
“We started badly compared to them,” Bennett said.
“To our credit, these guys kept hanging in there and fighting, but there were a few opportunities and we didn’t grab them.”
Young fullback Jye Gray could be in strife with the match review committee over a hip-drop tackle which sent Talakai to the sheds but Bennett was unsure whether it would attract a charge.
“I’m not sure what a hip-drop is to be honest with you, and I’m not saying that sarcastically,” Bennett said.
“It’s a pretty confusing lot of rules around that. I’m not a real good judge of hip-drop tackles.”
Des Hasler’s been in the lab and the Mad Professor has come up with a formula to cook up a potent NRL team.
Well, it worked this time – last week they were dreadful against the Bulldogs.
The challenge now for the Titans is to prove this comprehensive win was not yet another flash in the pan
Gold Coast are always a much better side when Tino Fa’asuamaleaui is leading from the front and his sizeable frame, which was absent for all but two matches last year in Hasler’s first season at the helm was decisive against the Knights.
He hurtled into the defensive line and offloaded for Jayden Campbell and Keano Kini to send JoJo Fifita zipping to the line to draw first blood in the 16th minute.
The skipper skittled defenders and put the Titans on the front foot with a quick play-the-ball and Campbell made the most of a scattered line to make it 12-0 at the break.
Second-rowers Beau Fermor and David Fifita benefited from a Campbell pass and kick respectively as the Titans surged to a 26-0 buffer before Kalyn Ponga presented Bradman Best with a late consolation try which only saved them from the embarrassment of being held scoreless.
That audible popping sound you may have heard on Saturday night if you were within earshot of Cbus Super Stadium was not the last remnants of Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
It was the Knights’ early-season bubble bursting – after a couple of impressive wins over the Tigers in Campbelltown and a Dolphins demolition at home, hopes were rising that Ponga could carry this team a long way this year.
But although they enjoyed 55% of possession in the first half, it was back to the bad old Knights of the past couple of seasons with a lack of precision in attack bringing them undone.
They made twice as many handling errors (16-8) as their opponents to never get going.
The bye next round has come at an opportune time for them to lick their wounds before we will get a better gauge of their finals capabilities, or lack thereof, when they take on the Bulldogs, improving Tigers, Sharks and Warriors in Auckland over the next month.
with AAP