It’s been quite the year for the Wests Tigers. If anything, probably one to forget. 

Granted, they’ll probably be saved from the dreaded spoon by a number of factors. The Dragons were winless after eleven games (and still only have four), the Broncos have watched their premiership defence crumble around them, and the Titans have continued their general meh-ness. All of these issues are giving them hearty competition at the bottom of the ladder.

They’re probably helped in this spoon-evasion by their early-season form, which saw them at one point with a 5-1 record and sitting third on the ladder. 

Remember that? 

Remember when Tigers fans were donning jockstraps and designing mock Madden NFL video game covers with Jock Madden? Remember when Kai Pearce-Paul was renamed ‘Try’ Pearce-Paul as he split his time on the field between scoring tries and possessing one of the best offloads in the competition? Remember when ‘BenjiBall’ was an actual thing? 

It was only April. 

Things seemed to unravel quickly. To list all of them would leave this longer than Set Restart’s tier of WordPress subscription has the storage for, but essentially:

In April, Jarome Luai was announced as the Papua New Guinea Chiefs’ first and founding player for 2028. Not an inherently bad thing, Luai had this year and next on his contract. But by July, Luai had the 2027 part of his contract bought out by the Tigers as a dramatic split saw him sign for the Parramatta Eels for next year before he moves to Port Moresby. 

Injuries ravaged the squad, as the stars from the Tigers’ promising early form like Api Koroisau and Pearce-Paul, whose name at some point probably reverted to ‘Kai,’ were hit with lengthy stints on the sidelines. Adam Doueihi, or, more likely, his manager Isaac Moses, sensed weakness at the Tigers after Luai was allowed to leave, and asked to leave the club, only to go back on his request less than a week later. They’ve been held to nil twice, losing 68-0 to the Panthers and 32-0 to the Bulldogs, and to top it all off, when things couldn’t get any worse, players were (allegedly) vaping in the gym. 

But in the season’s dying embers, the Tigers, helped by a Jock Madden field goal, shocked the top-of-the-ladder Sydney Roosters on Sunday afternoon, embodying, better than at any other point in this chaotic year, the Tigers’ refusal to be out of the headlines. 

It was arguably *the* upset of the 2026 NRL season, both in result and its impact. For the Tigers, it ended an eight-match losing streak, and for the Chooks, their hopes of winning the minor premiership have taken a severe dent. 

And at one point in the game, a winning margin of only a point would have flattered the Roosters. Jock Madden’s three missed conversions gave the Roosters a chance for a late comeback, which they almost mounted to perfection. The Tigers managed to hold out, though, and Madden’s field goal gave Wests their loudest moment of the season. 

It was perhaps most appropriate that it was Madden, having largely avoided much of the spotlight and the noise around his club in 2026, who kicked the Tigers to their biggest victory of the year. Madden looked so composed in the absence of Luai in the early rounds, and was one of the brightest stars in the club’s purple patch. Fast forward to Sunday, Madden looked just as composed as he did in March, this time alongside Luai rather than replacing him, and unfazed by the prospect of going head-to-head with the NRL’s standout half this year in Sam Walker. 

It’s hard to say whether the result necessarily bodes well for 2027. After all, they are still losing their star player in Luai a year earlier than his contract would dictate to a club he once told to ‘call us daddy.’ 

But for the moment, get those (alleged) vapes out, boys, you’ve earned this one.