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.

 

13. Nathan Brown

Brown made his NRL debut late in the 2013 NRL season after working way up through Wests' lower grades. While he impressed in his first game, second-tier salary cap restrictions stopped him from playing more than the one game that year. However, despite the Tigers' poor form in 2014, Brown failed to get a look in at all that season, eventually being released to South Sydney on the cusp of the 2015 season. Brown played 28 games over two years in Redfern and quickly became known for his high-energy stints, before Parramatta snared him. In his first year at the club, he won the Ken Thornett medal for the Eels' best and fairest. He was right in the Origin conversation last year, however injury has cruelled his chances of late.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - JUNE 17: Nathan Brown of the Rabbitohs is tackled short of the try line during the round 15 NRL match between the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Parramatta Eels at ANZ Stadium on June 17, 2016 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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