Dark days eclipse new dawn THE mood in both rooms was cautious but optimistic. In Balmain Leagues Club at Rozelle, the vote was far from clear cut; 295 to 99. Over at the Campbelltown equivalent, meanwhile, with fears for the future of the Western Suburbs Magpies more real, the vote was overwhelming, 254 to 7. At both locations in late July of 1999, members listened to their club legends. "The joint venture with Wests ensures the Tigers will live forever and I'm sure the Magpies feel the same way," the Balmain legend, and incumbent coach, Wayne Pearce told a gathering at Balmain. Fourteen years on, would he be quite so sure? You only have to look at one of those rooms. Cautious but optimistic back then, the Balmain club has an uncertain future; a metaphor for the football club which was, in part, born there. How did it come to this? How did Wests Tigers go from competition favourites before last season, to 10th that year, to second-last this year - not to mention third-last for home crowd support, following an alarming 31.4 per cent drop in 12 months? How could the same board which axed the veteran coach Tim Sheens then agitate to sack his replacement - while still paying Sheens? Could anyone in those rooms in 1999 have thought that, 14 years on, the two sides of the merger would still be squabbling, bickering, desperate for a million-dollar funding hit while the NRL watches on wondering whether it should step in and pull the two school kids apart? How could a professional club, 14 years after being formed, still have alternate chairmen and a board split down party lines? The truth is, many feared this long ago. "It's been heading in this direction for a long time," one source with intimate knowledge of the club said. But they're just reaching the iceberg. To understand how the club reached the iceberg, you need to understand where the iceberg is. It's losses in competition and losses in financial terms. One leads to another - and with the political minefield that is Wests Tigers complicated at best, the result is a predicament which has some describing what is happening to the club as a "perfect storm." Benji Marshall after beating North Queensland to lift the 2005 premiership trophy. There has long been an underlying issue of mistrust in the joint venture, with both sides wondering privately, and sometimes publicly, what the other's motives are; whether it be the belief that Balmain want to kill off the Magpies or, in the latest case, Wests taking control of the boardroom. This week's instalment has seen the Magpies side of the partnership not prepared to provide critical funding - an urgent $1 million boost - without greater control, with the ongoing issue of the Balmain side of the merger being financially hamstrung by the stalling of the Victoria Road leagues club redevelopment. Mistrust is a constant, but the level of it seems related to the team's position on the ladder. The higher the team is placed, the lower the mistrust; the lower the team ... It was hoped the premiership success of 2005 would extinguish that, and bring unity to the club. For a while it did. But a number of leaner years followed, and old problems which were wallpapered over by the title resurfaced. The mistrust is never extinguished; only masked by a well-performing football team. "When the going gets tough, the knives come out," one source said. Anatomy of a crisis: How the Herald has reported the turmoil at the joint venture over the past fortnight. And for the last 18 months, the club has done it tough. The Tigers are second-last on the ladder, and their home crowds have fallen from an average of 16,227 last year, to 11,139. The club has not averaged less than 15,000 since before 2005. Only Parramatta prevent them from being rock bottom on the competition table; only Canberra and Penrith prevent the same in average attendances. On Monday night, a crowd of 8393 watched the Tigers get torn apart by Sydney Roosters. The team everyone loved to watch is not being watched. Some of it is out of anyone's control. The Tigers' best side of today may have included the likes of winger Taniela Tuiaki and halfback Robert Lui to help Benji Marshall direct traffic, with a forward pack rotation including Bryce Gibbs, Gareth Ellis, Simon Dwyer, Andrew Fifita and Chris Heighington. Where are they now? Tuiaki and Dwyer were forced out of football due to freak serious injuries, Lui was sacked, Ellis got homesick, while Gibbs, Fifita and Heighington, as well as Beau Ryan, have controversially linked with Cronulla. Adam Blair has been blamed for much of the unrest around player movement, being the star forward who arrived while others departed. Yet the club, at least on signing the Melbourne premiership winner, hoped not to lose anyone. Then salary cap problems surfaced. As a result of a disputed six-figure salary cap fine, lost on appeal, the club put the feelers out to gauge interest elsewhere in Gibbs and others. Gibbs, who had not long before agreed to a three-year deal, was targeted by Cronulla - but only if the Sharks could also nab Fifita. Knowing they had to shed players, the club reluctantly agreed. But their desperation to offload continues to affect them, with Gibbs still paid a portion of his salary by the Tigers. Aaron Woods and Matt Groat were seen as promising young front-rowers, and kept. Fifita has subsequently become - along with Woods - a State of Origin player. Even at the start of last season, the club was still scrambling to find the cap space to allow Blair to fit into the squad. Fairfax Media understands the Tigers were only able to register the contract of Blair in the days leading into their round-one clash with Cronulla at Leichhardt Oval. To do so, the club had to offload Mitch Brown to the Bulldogs. The wash-up was Blair became a target of the supporters' frustrations, and team morale was hit. When Heighington left last year, and took Ryan - months after agreeing to a new deal with the Tigers - with him, it took another hit. Then there is Benji. All brash and bravado, the kid with the sparkling step and the earring to match, who helped Wests Tigers win the premiership in 2005. The step has gone, and Marshall doesn't sparkle so much any more. Some, we know, will be happy to see Marshall go. Those numbers have increased as his form has waned. But Marshall is more than just the numbers on the field, the metres, the line-breaks, the try assists and tries. He brings numbers through the gate and attracts sponsors to the club. While those abilities might have been somewhat diluted, some key Tigers officials saw the value in tying Marshall up long term, and wanted to gamble by paying up big to do so. In late January of this year, Marshall's manager Martin Tauber received a telephone call from the club's then chairman Nick Di Girolamo, who had replaced the Balmain appointment David Trodden late in the cycle. The pair met at a northern suburbs restaurant, and discussed a five-year deal. A few weeks later, on February 1, Tauber met with the chairman again at Concord Oval, alongside then chief executive Stephen Humphreys. Di Girolamo shook hands with Marshall and the deal was considered a formality, the finer details to be confirmed by Humphreys. A few months later, in June, when Humphreys again met Tauber, this time with Marshall's accountants, the deal was still considered a formality, to be ratified by the club's football committee. But the deal never eventuated. Humphreys left the club and Grant Mayer, who was installed as chief operating officer but later became CEO, subsequently told Tauber that the deal he would negotiate was for an upgrade of his contract, rather than an extension. The money was good, but not what it was before. Marshall upped and left. Money changes everything, of course. The club was in a relatively solid financial position from 2009 to 2011. Last season, having made the top four the previous two years, the Tigers were premiership favourites. Expectations were high and so were the budgets. Big crowds were anticipated and sponsorship contracts had performance bonuses built into them. The club counted on at least making the finals - but didn't. The Tigers parted ways with Sheens, without being able to cut the cord completely. Sheens is taking legal action after his salary, which was continuing to be paid until recently, was stopped. Yet the poor performances continued, and replacement coach Mick Potter's future will be discussed, and still perhaps decided, at a board meeting on Thursday night. On the field, the club is a long way from those seasons in 2010 and 2011. As a result, belts are tightened and relationships are strained. The club has never really had the luxury of working capital. It lives year-to-year and, when things are dire, month-to-month and week-to-week. A good year is leagues club support being minimised, rather than wiped out completely. Which means facilities are outdated. The gym is rather antiquated, at least compared to elsewhere, GPS data cannot be uploaded immediately, the sports science division is not what it should be. The high-performance facilities at the club's training base at Concord Oval are considered a long way from what the best clubs offer their players. In the club's first match, in February of 2000, the Tigers played out a 24-24 draw with Brisbane. Halfback Craig Field was unable to break the deadlock. The club has struggled to do the same in the boardroom ever since. This is a board which, to this day, mixes discussion around crucial financial decisions with vigorous debate about the size of the Magpies logo on the jersey sleeve. That small magpie highlights a bigger problem. Rumour and speculation run rampant from the boardroom to the dressing room; from Potter being under pressure to Marshall and the club captain Robbie Farah having a strained relationship - something that is regularly denied by the pair. The NRL, with its freedom under an independent commission, has been urging the Tigers to bring independence onto its board for some time. Yet this is not the first time such calls have been made. In 2004, five years into the merger, about $20,000 was spent to have a new constitution drafted, with an independent chairman and a smaller board. The proposal was ultimately rejected. About 18 months ago, the Balmain side of the merger revisited the proposal. But once again, it was rejected, and to this day, Wests Tigers is made up of two shareholders; Balmain and Wests Group, with five shares each. Some believe that a seven-member board - two Balmain nominees, two Wests nominees, two independents, as well as an independent chairman, might solve many of the issues, the feeling being the Wests and Balmain sides might actually work together to outnumber the independent votes. "Reboot the thing" is how one source put it. But when power and money are at play, it's difficult to see either side agreeing to it. Balmain is unable to provide the funding it used to because of that empty leagues club, waiting for a facelift that might not come. Wests Ashfield has the money, and are using that to gain more of the power. Some say quite rightly. NRL chief executive Dave Smith, meanwhile, watches on with interest. Smith has sat in on board meetings and along with ARL Commission chairman John Grant met separately with key Tigers officials. This week, Smith said this of Wests Tigers: "Corporate governance, for me since day one, has been a priority. It's something the game, and the reputation of the game, needs to strengthen. We have been working on that for a while. I've been talking to Wests Tigers for a number of months and I've been to the board a number of times. That conversation is ongoing. Does that conversation include the request for a $1 million injection? "The boards of the clubs run the football teams," Smith said. Their job is to run sustainable football clubs. Where assistance is required, the NRL of course would step up and discuss that. Where that assistance was required, we would look at why that assistance is required to try to address any underlying issue ... The point is trying to fix the problem rather than just handing out cash. It's about getting them to a sustainable, well-funded position. For the long-term health of the game, that simply has to happen. The job may fall again to Wayne Pearce, who was so optimistic 14 years ago, along with the rest of the commissioners, to provide the advice that ensures Wests Tigers is no longer a joint venture, but a unified football club.