Rugby league icons Phil Gould and Paul Gallen share the sensational belief that Wests Tigers are in desperate need of relocating from Concord to Campbelltown, following another dreadful season.
The comments of Gallen and Gould follow Wests’ 38-0 pummeling at the hands of wooden-spooners Canterbury on Sunday, which brought to close a 10th season in succession without finals football.
As Nine’s 100% Footy panel dissected the Tigers mess, Gallen asked Gould if the embattled club, which formed in a merge between Western Suburbs Magpies and the Balmain Tigers ahead of the 2000 season, should relocate from Concord to Campbelltown.
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The reasoning behind Gallen’s question was the stronger junior rugby league system in Sydney’s south-west than in the inner-west area of the city.
“I look at what you did at Penrith (as general manager of football) – and now Penrith are flying at the moment, obviously,” Gallen said to Gould.
“But you had that great junior nursery out there to build from and you say it all the time that you’ve got to build from within.
“They’ve got Campbelltown out there, nothing going on out there, a huge junior nursery out there.
“Would (the Tigers) be better moving to Campbelltown? Building a great facility out there so kids out there in Campbelltown have something to strive for, rather than being at Concord? How much junior footy is played at Concord?”
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Gould then explained that while the high-flying Panthers had bolstered their squad with several players from outside their junior system, at the core of Penrith’s success is their organic talent.
Gould, who’s now working as the Bulldogs’ general manager of football, said the Tigers must follow the Panthers’ blueprint in their bid to emerge from their decade-long woes.
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“I don’t understand the base at Concord … for the future of Wests Tigers,” Gould said.
“And we talk about what happened at the Panthers … and the academy and the junior league, the big junior league. At the Panthers, we had to recruit from outside the junior league. All the answers weren’t in the junior league. We gave every junior player the opportunity to play for the Panthers and we developed them through.
“But Isaah Yeo and James Fisher-Harris and Matt Burton and … Charlie Staines – they all came from outside. Corey Harawira-Naera and these players. They all came from New Zealand or NSW country when we expanded out into there.
“But (the Panthers) got the junior league right. Every kid that was in the junior league they got and they kept and they held and they’re still playing there.
“And Wests Tigers haven’t even done that. That’s where they need to get to – and the biggest chance for (that) is south-west Sydney: out there in that Campbelltown group-six area, which is growing unbelievably, all the way from Campbelltown across to Penrith and out where the new airport is going to be and back into Liverpool … The area is massive and no one is looking after it.”
