Tigers to Hunt New Cubs

Wests Tigers coach Tim Sheens has urged his club to recruit well over the next 18 months if they want to be a top eight side again.

The Tigers needed a win against Manly to stay in touch with the top eight going into the last two rounds of the regular season but a poor second half may have signalled the end of their 2008 campaign.

A Manly try to Steve Menzies just before the break and another two to the visitors through Glenn Hall and Brett Stewart just after the break put the game beyond doubt. “We we’re scoring points but we were giving ground. We always looked like we were going to get beat,” Sheens said.

Menzies, Stewart and Hall all scored two tries in Manly’s 48-16 win keeping them in touch with Melbourne and the Sharks for the minor premiership after losses to the Storm and a struggling Rabbitohs side.

The Tigers must now win their last two games against the Sharks, who currently sit in equal first, and the Titans who welcomed back Scott Prince this week in their golden point loss to the Broncos.

The Tigers will also have to rely on other results going their way to finish in the eight but Sheens believes his side is “not playing well enough to deserve to get in there [finals] anyway”.

Since the clubs premiership win in 2005 they have failed to make the finals. “We’re finishing the season very poorly. This is three years in a row this has happened in the last month,” Sheens said.

Manly captain Matt Orford, who answered his critics with a strong all around performance, expected the second half to be a tougher battle, but “they’ve got some young guys in their team and they’ll probably learn from this,” he said.

It was however one of the Tiger’s young guns that provided the only positive out of a poor performance.

“I’ve got a kid out there with eight games tonight, Daine Laurie, and he looked like he was on a different planet tonight to our guys,” Sheens said.

Laurie scored his sides first two tries and looked dangerous with the ball all night.

Sheens believes the solution to the Tigers form slump over the last three seasons is to force players out of the club to get new, better players in.

At the start of the season Sheens thought this was a “watershed year for the club. We can’t finish this year waiting for potential to happen. It’s time to bite the bullet and go and look for some players to improve the club,” he said.

For Tigers fans this could mean a long wait as Sheens expects the transition to happen over the next two seasons. The premiership winning coach however may not get as long if his team’s performance does not improve soon. “I’ve got two years left, if I’m not hung out to dry, so we are going to have to make a conscious decision to changing quite a few players in the club,” he said.