Year in Review - Part VII of XVI

Yes, it's in violation of bylaw 7(ii) of League Blog's Year in Review Regulations, but I had to post the Tigers obit before the Cowboys, as it contains a reference to this weekend's games. Could I have just omitted the reference? No, I could not. Moving on, the Tigers have been very much an everyman's team. Let's take a look at their season.

Wests Tigers: A Strange Consistency

Robbie Farah's pre-game ritual

Highlight: A late season surge that had everyone looking forward to them making the finals for the first time since 2005.
Lowlight: Not making the finals.
Most Valuable Player: Benji “Reconstructive Surgery” Marshall. He’s so exciting, he’s like a surprise party and a free chocolate bar rolled into one.
Most Worthless Player: John Morris. Someone has to take the blame and it’s sure as hell not Tim Sheens’ fault.
Telling Statistic: The Tigers were the third-most exciting team to watch in the history of rugby league (behind the 1994 Raiders and the 2009 Sharks) but the fourth most inconsistent (behind the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Tigers). This brings me to my main point. The standard line on the Tigers (and Raiders and Rabbitohs) is that they are too inconsistent. Gee, on their day they can beat anyone, just look at those top four scalps. But then they ruin it all by losing to the worst team. They just need to rub out the inconsistency from their game. A few well-seasoned vets, some luck with injuries, and they’ll really make some noise. League Blog asks you, if a team has played the same way every year for the last four years with exactly the same results, shouldn’t we be calling this a model of consistency? The problem with the Tigers isn’t that they’re inconsistent, it’s that they’re crap. But gee they’re good to watch.
Quote that sums up their year: "We're a better team than we have been in the last three years, and we want to prove that.” Benji and Co have done just that, moving from 10 wins and 14 losses (2006) to 11 and 13 (2007) to 11 and 13 (2008) to 11 and 12 (2009). See? One less loss that last year. Hang on, there’s still one week to go. Ok Tigers, if you can beat the Dogs, then by any reasonable measure you’ll have proved you’re a better team than the last three years.
2010 Outlook: Tuiaki will peak, thus continuing the eery parallels between his and Matt Utai’s careers, Benji’s left shoulder will explode in Round 5, Tim Sheens will get signed to a 3 year extension, Robbie Farah will join David Williams on the SOO blacklist, the Tigers will be the most exciting team to watch (and play against) and they will lose in the last week to miss out on the semis.