Long-sufferers,
So, a 12th fruitless season comes to an end, and Mad Monday finally arrives.
At least we can now put on women's clothing and drink heavily.
Said it before, say it again...jeez...Balmain are a hard team to follow.
It's exhausting when you are in a death fight with Newcastle for months on end to avoid the Wooden Spoon, which [wipe of brow] they did, and actually leapt into 14th on the table on percentage in a 16 team comp, after winning the last game of the season
However, when you are just about the first team of the year to have no hope of making the top eight, that makes it tough.
Seven wins in a 24 game season is a long time between drinks in a bitter winter.
And it makes it even worse when quite a few of the really important games were lost by small margins, never mind finishing near the bottom of the ladder...there aren't even any draft picks as compensation as there is no draft in the rugby league...money does the talkin'.
Just two finals appearances in the last 12 seasons.
None in the last six.
The Stats Guru also reckons that in a 13-a-side game, the Tiges fielded no less than 29 players in first-grade this year.
Not exactly a "settled team".
The appalling litany of hideous woe goes on.
It still hasn't ceased to amaze me how a team can look a million dollars on paper for years, and still can't get anywhere with it.
The worst team money can buy?
Surely not.
It seemed the season just lurched from one disaster to another - as usual.
As everyone knows, the season got off to a magnificent auspicious start, with the dysfunctional board finally sacking coach Squeak Taylor at long long long last for being a fool to himself and a burden on the football community, not to mention just being a very difficult turd.
Ivan "Clearly It's" Cleary is plucked out of obscurity to coach, on a not great record viz-a-viz the ol' win/loss track record - and then does nothing at all for the rest of the year to improve it.
Then the club's three best players walk.
Moses throws the Tablets down from the Mount in a hissy fit and worms his way out of the rest of his contract and goes to Parramatta, where he finds a purple patch helping the Eels into the Top 4 for the first time in eons, so he now has a reasonable chance at berth in the Grand Final [that everybody knows will be won by the Storm].
The best full-back in the known world, James Tedesco, then immediately signs on the dotted line for a King's Ransom at Eastern Suburbs, but finds his Balmain contract is as water tight as Huon pine, and he has to play on in the Black and Gold for the rest of the year, but to his credit, has a very good season under trying circumstances to prove he is worth every cent that the Roosters can pay him.
Good luck to him, he wants to win a Premiership too, and why not?
Anyone would pay Teddy big money, and Easts finished second on the ladder this year without him - who knows what they'll do next year with him.
Chances are he'd be waiting all career at Leichhardt, ending up without so much as a sausage.
Captain Woodsy links up with the evil Canterbury-Bankstown mob, plays on at Balmain, but only gets about 20 mins game time in the State of Origin's, and loses interest in club football as the season wears on, and then finds karma could come back to bite him on the arse.
Seems while he has a contract at the 'Dogs, Woody's deal is yet to be signed off at League HQ until they have had a very good look at Canterbury's salary cap arrangements, and if the cards fall the wrong way, Woodsy might not be able to fit in under the cap at his current price and Clearly It's Cleary has made it clear "we are not going to retain Woods in a fire sale. There is no offer on the table..."
Aaron's plaintive cry of "I would never have left if I knew Cleary was coming" has obviously fallen on stone deaf ears.
Ah...rugby league - a brutal game on the field and a cruel one off the park - that's why we love it!
And there's never any shortage of palace intrigue, rumour and innuendo, unconscionable conduct and sheer bastardry.
Won't even mention the time mid-season when some players were arrested on "affray" charges after an all-in brawl in some seedy bar spilled over onto the Balmain Road, and spent overnight in the local lock-up to get sober.
A real traffic-stopper.
Only Luke Brooks of "the big four" remains for 2018, but while there's no doubt he's 'the goods' - he's had an ordinary '17 struggling with chronic niggles.
Cleary, at least, has brought in a few reasonably good journeymen on a couple of matchday beers and a cut lunch contracts and blooded a some promising youngsters, but hey - where's the quality full-back, five-eighth, whole pack of forwards, not to mention a new Captain for '18?
There are a couple of new Islander boys who are built like brick shit houses - really athletic men mountains who can play - they'll go far, you'd think.
The 18-year-old debutant Moses Suli, and the imported Tuimoala "The LoLo" Lolohea come to mind.
It's the way the game is going anyway; the side with the biggest artillery usually wins.
Then the whole damn caper comes full circle with the announcement that the Prodigal Son, The Great Benji Marshall, will make a return to the club next year in only god knows what sort of capacity at the real arse end of his career, at age 32.
Been warming a bench somewhere while he's been away.
He should never have left anyway, but that's another long, tawdry story you can read elsewhere in this thingy.
Only half jokingly, Benj says he's coming back on board to play "18th man".
And in a very bizarre twist, Benji's brother, 21-year-old Jeremy Marshall-King made his NRL debut for the Tiges in the final game of the year.
My head is spinning.
Among the flaming wreckage of the season - special, notable and honourable mention should be made of Chris Lawrence who struck me as such a "Try Scoring Freak" early on in his career in the centres, that it became his middle name.
The quintessential club man goes and equals Benji Marshall's all-time try scoring record for the Balmain/Wests Tigers joint venture.
Club Life Member, 209 games, 76 tries, in an 11 year career - turns 30 next year, and is newly contracted for another two seasons to end his illustrious career in the second row.
A dead-set genuine champion who never gets the credit that is his due, which may have something to do with his nick name "Rowdy"; he'd rather break yr back and tear yr throat out than look at you on the field, but he is the meekest, mildest-mannered kind of regular guy you could ever meet by all reports; the compleat gentleman, off the paddock.
Something every footballer should aspire to; sheer class, modesty...there are more than enough show ponies in the game as it is.
But as they say in The Classics - "there's always next year" - even though the prospects for '18 don't augur that well.
Supported this mob through thick and thin for more than 30 years now [for three grand finals and one premiership]; you do that, and you learn all there is to learn about hope.
Take it up the middle, and scream down the blindside.
Go you Mighty Tiiiiges!
The very last match played in the NRL regular season 2017 - Game No. 192.
WESTS TIGERS 28. Tries: Naiqama (2), Lolohea, Marsters, Nofoaluma. Goals: Lolohea (4).
NEW ZEALAND WARRIORS 16. Tries: Kata, Tuivasa-Sheck, Nicoll-Klokstad. Goals: Luke (2).
At Leichhardt Oval.
Crowd: 10,231.
