For it was only last month that Luai – the franchise’s best-paid player – made such a contribution to the Tigers’ “flustercluck on roller-skates’, that it kept it going for days after what should have been its end. As you’ll recall, it turned on the Tigers’ 19-year-old wunderkind Lachie Galvin quietly declining to commit himself to another five years at Leichhardt on the grounds he wasn’t convinced that Benji Marshall was as good a coach as he had been a player.
In response, two relevant things happened.
Despite being warned against it, the Tigers put out a catastrophic press release announcing his declination which unleashed the hounds of hell such that Galvin needed security, and has since threatened legal action over it. And three of Galvin’s teammates, led by Luai, went for him on social media, the skipper writing: “TEAM FIRST.”
Get it?
According to Luai, it was like Galvin’s damn hide to even contemplate leaving the Tigers because, you know . . . TEAM FIRST.
Your humble correspondent, in the meantime, offered a prediction on what would come:
“The Tigers will collapse, and it will be another season shot. More and more people will come to the conclusion that Benji Marshall is like just about every other great football player – the magic of their playing days is non-transferable to their coaching. At this point, Tigers management will be left contemplating their own insanity in putting the previously untested Marshall on a five-year contract when they had to pay out their last two coaches early, before their contractual terms were completed.
Lachlan Galvin and Jarome Luai.Credit: Steven Siewert
“And then, in the smoking ruins of a Tigers team heading for the bottom, we can all see if Jarome Luai’s ‘TEAM FIRST’ mantra still holds, or he will activate his get-out clause, and indeed get out.”
And here we are.
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Yesterday, the Tigers were beyond bad. If you had taken 13 good players off the street and thrown them together, it is hard to believe they could have gone worse. There was precisely no structure, no oomph, no leadership, no ability to stop the avalanche as Ryan Papenhuyzen ran riot to the tune of three tries in the first 20 minutes, and then another one for good measure. The Tigers lost everything bar the will to live, and finished on the wrong side of a 64-0 scoreline. Who would not want to leave a team that bad?
Except you, Jarome Luai.
We know you don’t because you are the “TEAM FIRST” guy. Others may choose to go, but it’s for you to stay, like you promised.
When you left a team that had won four premierships to go to a team that had three wooden spoons, this was always going to be on the cards, and now those cards have dropped. Read ’em and weep.
I repeat: no doubt you have no such intent, and fully intend to see out the contract. No doubt your fine father just went a step too far, and you are as intent as ever on TEAM FIRST.
But now is the time for the team to say so.
We’ll wait.
I’ll be in my trailer.
