You can bet your house on Michael Maguire to be the first coach sacked this year

[josie andrews]

*Coach Maguire's Wests Tigers are actually worse than they were last year
*Turned in an effort devoid of urgency and enthusiasm in loss to Newcastle
*Now it's no longer whether he gets sacked, just a matter of when

This isn't going to be one of those 'Who is going to be the first NRL coach sacked this season?' columns.

The answer to that is too obvious.

The only question is how long Michael Maguire is going to last before Wests Tigers pull the pin.

Two games in, and it's clear the Tigers aren't as bad as they were last season. Incredibly, they're worse.

There is no enthusiasm, no urgency. Apart from five-eighth Jackson Hastings, no nothing. As Fox commentator Greg Alexander put it late in their 26-4 loss to the Knights, 'They look like they're on a training session.'

And a pretty ordinary one at that.

To say that Maguire is on shaky ground is an understatement the size of Payne Haas. He only held on to his job by the skin of his teeth at the end of last season after the players held an unsuccessful coup and given the effort they put in against the Knights, they don't seem to like him any better now.

The club brought in their only premiership-winning coach Tim Sheens to ride shotgun over him, but if the Tigers' performances in the first two games is any indication, the partnership isn't exactly working.

If it comes down to one of them being shown the door you can bet it's not going to be Sheens.

Madge won't beat the record of inaugural South Queensland Crushers' coach Bill Gardner, who was sacked before the first game of the season, but the way things are looking, he won't be far off it.

On the other side of the field the Knights looked like they could have been on a training session too, with the Tigers playing the role of the witches' hats.

In contrast to Maguire, Newcastle coach Adam O'Brien looks like he's got a team that can really make an impression on the competition this year.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/nrl/a ... igers.html