Interim Wests Tigers CEO Shane Richardson has a habit of turning struggling teams into premiership winners and they should look to keep him long-term after their board overhaul.
The Tigers cleaned out their entire board signalling the end of the reign of Lee Hagipantelis and Richardson’s predecessor Justin Pascoe, who oversaw a period of mediocrity.
The Tigers have the longest finals drought in the NRL stretching back to 2011 and haven’t tasted premiership success in almost two decades, while they have picked up the last two wooden spoons back-to-back.
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However, Richardson is no stranger to taking clubs from the NRL cellar to the penthouse and he knows the steps needed to turned the struggling club around on and off the field.
Richardson was at the Panthers in the early 2000s when he helped take the club from perennial underachievers to their second premiership title and first in 12 years in 2003.
Then having taking Penrith to the mountaintop, Richardson abruptly left to join the wooden spooners the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
Souths had only been back in the competition for two seasons after George Piggins’ infamous crusade to have the foundation club reinstated, after they were cut from the NRL for two years from 2000 to 2002.
The Rabbitohs were a basketcase in their return to the top flight winning just eight games in two seasons to win back-to-back wooden spoons.
Sound familiar?
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Then Panthers general manager Roger Cowan summed up Richardson’s departure in 2004 perfectly.
“He loves a challenge and what better challenge could you have than to go to Souths?” Cowan said.
Souths won more games in their first full season with Richardson at the helm (9) than they had since they returned to the NRL and within three years they were back in the finals with 12 wins and 12 losses in 2007.
During his 11 years at the Rabbitohs Richardson saw the club transform from a club with back-to-back wooden spoons in 2004 to defending premiers in 2015 after their drought-breaking title the season before (2014).
Once again having reached the summit of his rebuild at Souths, Richardson left to join the NRL head of strategy and development in 2015.
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This is an area the Tigers have struggled in as Richardson himself explained in James Graham’s The Bye Round Podcast earlier this year.
“The Wests Tigers have got an unbelievable recruitment area,” Richardson said.
“But instead of actually working towards a plan to get that through, they charge off and they chase players that they’re never going to be a chance of picking up.
“They might say, ‘Well if you don’t try’ … but instead of looking at the next player down that will come, that will do the job, their recruitment policy is not about getting the middle right and then the specials, they never got this right.
“And they’ve not put the pathways through. No kid will leave a club if he thinks he’s going to be the halfback in three years’ time.
“[But] he’ll leave the club when that shuts off to him. So when you bring players in, you’ve got to think what opportunities you’re blocking off for the kids coming through.
“And if you do that, and you allow for that in your planning, those kids will stay with you and that’s where you’ll get your loyalty. But Wests don’t do that, they want the big hit. That’s why they get beat every week.”
Having taken the Panthers and the Rabbitohs from the lowest of the lows to the top of the NRL tree, Richardson looks now set for his biggest challenge yet at the Tigers.
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The club is starting from the bottom of the barrel with two wooden spoons, a rookie coach in Benji Marshall and a new look board after spearing the old one in one fell swoop.
Richarsdon has been here before and beat unbelievable odds to turn the tide at Penrith and Souths, so he knows how to get the job done.
But whether the club known for its infighting and leaks to the media can get their house in order to follow his lead remains to be seen.
Time will tell, but the Tigers finally have the right man for the job. Now they just have to keep him long enough to return perennial underacheivers to the penthouse.
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