Wests Tigers News

The Wests Tigers are a professional Rugby League team based in the Australian city of Sydney where they represent the Inner West and Macarthur regions of the city.

The club formed in 1999 as a joint venture between the Balmain Tigers and the Western Suburbs after the fall out of the Super League led to a contraction of clubs.

Since then, the club have had seasons of success, seasons of failure and lots in between, which can make it hard to keep up with all of the news coming up of the club but now you can do just that right here at 13v13.

Wests Tigers Breaking News

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Wests Tigers Latest News Today

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Stadium

The club have 3 grounds that they class as home, partially down to the joint venture nature of the Tigers and partially down to using the incredible new stadium in Parramatta.

The first home ground for the club is the Leichhardt Oval, which is located in Lilyfield and is the former home of the Balmain Tigers.

The ground features a mixture of seating and terraces and offers limited corporate facilities to be able to accommodate around 20,000 fans when full.

The club other main stadium is the Campbelltown Stadium, which is the former home of the Western Suburbs and is located in the Leumeah suburb of the city.

The ground can host around 17,500 fans when full and aside from a small ‘main stand’ and a small, roofed section, the ground is an open bowl with limited facilities.

The final ground to be used by the club is the stunning Western Sydney Stadium that is a modern all seater stadium with lots of corporate facilities and steeply banked stands to give a great atmosphere.

Location

The clubs traditional home turfs of Lilyfield, in Sydney’s Inner West region and Leumeah, in the Macarthur region of Western Sydney gives the club a traditional home base stretching almost from the centre of Sydney out to the far western suburbs of the city.

That gives the club a traditional fanbase in western Sydney but due to the size of the competition, they now have fans not just from throughout Sydney but from across the whole country.

About

The club were formed out of the ashes of the destructive Super League wars as the newly formed NRL had to lose clubs and a number of joint ventures were proposed.

Two such clubs were the Balmain Tigers and the Western Suburbs who were both historic clubs and who were both based in western Sydney.

The Balmain Tigers were established in 1908 and were one of the original foundation clubs in Australia and throughout their long history they enjoyed lots of success including 11 Premierships and 7 Minor Premierships.

The other club to form the joint venture were the Western Sydney Magpies, who still run as a separate entity in State and junior level competitions.

The Magpies were an also a foundation club formed in 1908 and they had also enjoyed lots of success including 4 Premierships and 5 Minor Premierships but they had also lots of struggle with 17 wooden spoons.

History

The Super League wars was a disastrous and turbulent time for the sport in Australia and in the fall out of it, clubs were offered money to merge (or form a joint venture).

Balmain had spoken to the Parramatta Eels and the Gold Coast Chargers whilst the Western Suburbs had talked to both the Canterbury Bulldogs and the Penrith Panthers but with both clubs feeling that the other clubs they spoke simply wanted a takeover, the 2 clubs got together and a joint venture was formed.

The former Balmain coach Wayne Pearce took charge for their inaugural campaign in 2000 which saw them start life with a 24-24 draw at Campbelltown against Brisbane.

The next few seaosn were a struggle for the club but by 2003, the club moved to a new strategy of producing local talent over buying expensive stars and that seem to have instant success.

One such player was Benji Marshall, who debuted in 2003 and shone early alongside both Brett Hodson and Pat Richards who debuted in 2004.

The 2005 saw the club not only reached the end of season play-offs for the first time but they would set crowd records at 3 grounds (20,527 at Campbelltown, 29,542 and Telstra Stadium and 22,877 and Leichhardt Oval).

Most importantly they would make it through to their first ever Grand Final, where they would meet North Queensland and after a thrilling 80 minutes of attacking from both sides, the club would pick up their first ever Premiership title.

They would also join a short list of Souths (in 1908) and Newtown (in 1910) to win the Grand Final on their first visit to the big show.

The fallout of that success saw a number of stars leave the club and a number of stars spent much of the next seaosn injured.

Those struggled were evident in the World Club Challenge when they took on and lost heavily to Bradford before they would end the year outside of the top 8.

The next few seaosn saw the title winning team broken up and the club continue to drop down the table which wasn’t helped by off of the field issues including a lot of change at the board level.

It took until the 2010 season for the club to reach the end of season play-offs once again after they finished 3rd in the table but they would come up short of reaching the final by 1 game in a narrow loss to the eventual winners St George.

They would back that up in 2011 with a 4th place finish and another semi-final berth in the play-offs and that led to a lot of expectation on them in 2012 but they would struggle to match that and finished back down in 10th.

The next few years would also see the club miss out on knock out rugby and they would also see more upheaval in the boardroom, which culminated with an off of the field restructure in 2014, including the NRL taking a stake in the club due to the financial problems of the Balmain Tigers.

It wasn’t until 2016 that those issues were solved, with the clubs on the field struggles also continuing and things were not helped by a salary cap scandal in 2018.

The 2019 season saw the opening of the Western Sydney Stadium in a match featuring Parramatta and Wests but it would be the Tigers who came away feeling embarrassed as the ‘hosts’ thrashed them 51 points to 6.

Their first ‘home’ game to be played there saw another disappointing result as they lost 0-28 to the Raiders.

Wests Tigers News Headlines

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Wests Tigers News Update

News stories are always in constant flux, especially when they first break but we here at 13v1 bring you all of the latest updates to Wests Tigers news stories as and when they happen.