They are the story of the young NRL season, a team that has risen to second place – equal first on points – and demonstrated both grit and flair during a winning run that threatens to end a 15-year finals wait.
The secret is out for these reconstituted, red-hot Wests Tigers. Just don’t call it a revival.
“I don’t know if there’s a secret, I don’t know if it’s a revival either,” says Api Koroisau, trying to keep a lid on long-suffering fans’ growing excitement. “We’re, sort of, just out there playing week to week and, yeah, trying to play some good footy.”
If it sounds simple, it suddenly appears to be. After an off-season of tumult due to boardroom wrangling over the direction of the club, a season tainted by the departure of Lachlan Galvin, and 15 years of mediocrity – the Tigers are finally winning again.
“There hasn’t been much winning around the club,” says the hooker, now back in the Origin selection frame. “So for us, it’s important to stay on track and make sure we do our jobs.”
Since their tight loss against Souths in round three, the Tigers overcame a 10-0 deficit to beat the Warriors in Auckland, their first win across the ditch in almost a decade. They snuffed out the Eels’ hopes in a golden point thriller on Easter Monday, at a rowdy Commbank Stadium. Then they knocked off another form team in the Knights thanks to a breathtaking blitz at Campbelltown.
It’s only three games, but in the short and mostly dire history of the merged entity, even fleeting success is enough to get fans giddy.
The list of the Tigers’ longest winning streaks reads like an abridged history of the club. Of course there are two from the premiership year of 2005, the glory capped off by Benji Marshall’s flick pass.
There’s one from 2007, a season during which Marshall and Brett Hodgson both suffered serious injuries and the campaign ended with a final round defeat that left the club ninth, a position fans have become accustomed to.
Seven wins in a row dates back to 2012, the last season coached by Tim Sheens. And the club-record nine, from 2011, when Lote Tuqiri dropped a bomb on the wing against the Warriors in the premiership that got away.
If the Tigers beat the Broncos on Saturday night their streak becomes four, tying that of the 2010 side which was heavily favoured for the premiership. That iteration – again led by Marshall – let slip finals victories against the Roosters with a scrum loss against the feed, and the Dragons in the preliminary final when Beau Ryan needlessly kicked on first tackle, 30m out, with 20 seconds to play and down by one.
Marshall set that famous faux pas up with a piece of magic on the other side of the field, and fittingly he has been behind the current resurgence, lazily dubbed by the rugby league media as “Benji-ball”.
In the tradition of Marshall the flamboyant player, yes, the Tigers now have license to promote the ball – they lead the competition in offloads – but this is a side founded in the gritty basics of possession rugby league: a physical forward pack and outside backs, invention around the ruck and composed halves play.
Korisau said he has heard the term Benji-ball once or twice, and he’s not sure what it means. But he certainly knows how his coach wants to play. “It is to express ourselves when we’re out there,” he says. “But I think at the end of the day we have a set structure that we need to play by and make sure we stick to, and then opportunities come off the back of that to allow a bit more free-flowing footy.”
A blockbuster at Commbank Stadium against an under-strength Broncos is the first of a sequence of fixtures that will determine whether there is something to the Tigers’ early season pep. Following that match come the Raiders at Leichhardt Oval, the Sharks in the Shire, then Melbourne away.
They will be boosted by the addition of Jarome Luai this weekend, who returns after a knee injury suffered against Souths. Alex Seyfarth – the local junior and bench backrower who has played almost 100 NRL matches but never sniffed a final – says Luai’s experience as a premiership winner at Penrith has helped the players keep an even keel.
“We’ve got a pretty good group where we’ve had a few players who’ve had quite a lot of success, so they keep us grounded, they hold us to a standard and it’s just business as usual,” he says .
It might only be round seven in a long season, and there’s no guarantee the Tigers’ form will continue. But at a club known more for fly-on-the-wall documentaries than find-a-way victories, a start like this is cause to celebrate.
Seyfarth knows better than most. “We probably haven’t had one of these [starts to the season] in quite a few – I definitely haven’t – so I’m definitely enjoying it, embracing it.”
