Apologies if you’re an National Rugby League (NRL) fan, because this might seem the most obvious #NRLOutsider column yet. See, in my trips around Sydney’s rugby league culture, I’m yet to meet anyone with an answer to the question in the headline, and instead tend to find several versions of the same theme: they’re not really anything. Last week, various figures from Brad Fittler to Benny Elias came out with their ideas about what the Wests Tigers should be in the future, but nobody appears to know what they are right now. They’ve played five home games this season in four different stadiums. One of those in a heritage stadium that everyone agrees can’t be a full time NRL venue, another is six times too large for their fanbase, the third is Parramatta’s stadium and the fourth is Campbelltown. They’re owned 90% by Wests, but everyone calls them the Tigers, and by all accounts, they seem to play up the Tigers bit far more than the Wests bit. They are funded by Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, but none of those four stadiums that have hosted any games are anywhere near Ashfield and the other Wests Leagues Club, outside Campbelltown Stadium, isn’t formally linked to the football club at all. If you find this confusing, join the club. The best line of argument appears to be that the Wests Tigers, who were built out of the amalgamation of the Western Suburbs Magpies and the Balmain Tigers at the turn of the millennium, have now been around long enough to have their own fans, as opposed to just the fans of the previous two clubs combined. They have their own legends, the likes of Benji Marshall and Robbie Farah, and their own club with an independent culture built on two decades of shared history. If that exists, it wasn’t in Campbelltown on Saturday when the Tigers played the Gold Coast Titans. Campbelltown Stadium, home to the Wests bit since 1987, hosted 8,000 or so fans, well down on the number who attended in the last season of records (2019) and slightly less than attended the most recent game at Leichhardt Oval, home to the Balmain bit, a few weeks ago. At the two larger venues, the Tigers have had stronger attendances, but largely due to playing clubs from Sydney that bring their own contingent to boost numbers. That’s the numbers. The anecdotal evidence is more damning: the jersey split seemed to be about 50% Wests Tigers, 25% old school Wests and 25% old school Balmain. When the bloke on the PA tried to start up chants of “Tigers”, a significant portion of the crowd seemed more than reluctant to join in with singing in favor of their partner. They played in Wests Magpies tribute jerseys, in honor of Tommy Raudonikis, but that only seems to confirm that every other week, they aren’t really Wests. You could still buy Wests merch, but only to support the junior setup that still bears the name. It felt like nobody really had ownership of anything. Who are the Tigers, and who are Wests? The obvious answer to why that might be is because nobody does.
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What Is The Point Of Wests Tigers
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