The best there never was. The Wests Tigers are stuck amidst the longest current finals drought in the NRL, with their last top eight finish coming all the way back in 2011. Every other team has featured in at least one finals series between 2012 and now โ€“ except Wests.

While fans are quick to point the finger and lay blame on different figures within the club, their seven straight years of bottom eight finishes comes down to one single factor โ€“ retention.

Some of the best players of the game have featured in the Wests Tigers system over the last decade, yet somehow been allowed to walk away from the club. Internationals, Origin stars and club heroes, now wearing the colours of another club.

Hereโ€™s the best 17 of players that have been let go, released or not re-signed by the Tigers over the last decade.

 

6. Benji Marshall

This one is a bit different. Benji eventually returned the club a four-year exodus. With his future clouded at the club, Marshall made the decision to leave the club in 2013 for Union, with Wests not putting up too much of a fight to retain him. The face of the club for nearly a decade, and a premiership-winner, Marshall departed the club. A few months after his code switch, he re-joined the NRL with the Dragons, playing finals footy in his two and a half year stint in the Red V before a season in Brisbane, falling one game short of a Grand Final appearance, before eventually re-joining Wests.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - JULY 08: Benji Marshall of the Tigers prepares for the start of the game during the round 18 NRL match between the Parramatta Eels and the Wests Tigers at Parramatta Stadium on July 8, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

2 COMMENTS

  1. Ive lamented the retention and recruitment situati at the Tigers for years. It’s been woeful. The number of current players who used to be with the Tigers is astounding. Admittedly someone like Tedesco is hard to.keep given his price tag but many of the others were very affordable as fa review as salary cap goes. The previous management of recruitment and retention was woeful and with the departure of this management I hope things will stabilise. Of the seventeen listed here fourteen of them should have been kept on. There were only three that I thought were not as well performed as I would like.

  2. Beau Ryan in the 17? Youโ€™ve got to be kidding. Heโ€™s a reggie at best, or more likely, belongs in the old 3rd grade.

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