It’s been 15 years, but the Wests Tigers are playing in the finals again
It’s been 15 long years, but the Wests Tigers are finally playing finals football again.
For the first time since 2011, a top-grade Tigers team will play a match at the business end of the season, thanks to the club’s NRLW side sealing a top-four finish with a 7-4 record during the 11-match regular season.
It’s an impressive turnaround for a team that finished with just one win, and the wooden spoon for the second year in a row in 2025.
The last Wests Tigers team to play finals was Tim Sheen’s 2011 squad that included Marshall, Lote Tuqiri and Robbie Farah.
One of the most significant changes for the NRLW team this year has been the arrival of coach Craig Sandercock.
“If you were to say to me at the start of the year, you’re playing finals footy, I would have 100 per cent taken that,” Sandercock said.
“It’s been a great, great year, and you could probably consider it a really successful year from the club, especially with where we’ve come from.”
The team always had potential, said Sandercock, but there were a handful of areas that required improvement.
“When I watched all their games from last year, they only won one game, but there were periods in every game that they competed, and they competed hard, and it was just, I suppose, some key moments last year that really cost them,” Sandercock said.
“Then that fed into that mindset of, here we go again, and then they concede another try and another try. So, for us, it was all about trying to build some resilience and really work hard on icing or winning those key moments in games that can lead to positive results.”
The recruitment of veteran players Raecene McGregor and Shaylee Bent has also been a huge boost, and those experienced players have joined forces with captain Kezie Apps and forward Sarah Togatuki – who have been with the club since that first 2023 season – to steer the team into the finals.
“I feel like this year the coach and the recruitment [team] have done a great job of finding that balance [between youth an experience],” said Apps.
“We’ve still got our young girls coming through who are learning and who are going really good, but we’ve also got that great balance of the leaders and the experience within the group as well.
“It’s obviously been a big change this year from going from only winning one game last year, and now here we are near finals, and we’ve come fourth.
“Reflecting on the season that we’ve had ... and comparing that to last year coming last and then coming fourth, I think that’s something that needs to be celebrated and something that needs to be recognised of how hard the girls have worked to get to where we are.”
The Tigers will play either Newcastle, who they beat with a 68th-minute field goal in round eight, or Canberra, who they lost 22-10 to in the final round of the season, in week one of the finals.
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