Rugby league guru Phil Gould says the Wests Tigers' struggles are in part due to the club's default response to "band-aid over things" internally, rather than "to sit back from the outside" and discover what the real problems are.
The Tigers, who last reached the finals in 2011, look destined to again miss out on postseason football currently sitting 12th on the NRL ladder, with five wins and 10 losses to their name.
The Concord-based club's struggles have been highlighted by a number of internal issues, namely player unrest and speculation surrounding the coaching future of Michael Maguire.
Coming off three consecutive defeats, in which the Tigers have conceded a total of 144 points, pressure is continuing to mount on the club.
Gould says the Tigers, like several other clubs in the competition, are failing to appropriately address the internal issues that are leading to the negative results on the field.
"Having been involved behind the scenes in football clubs, sometimes the people inside the organisation can't see the forest for the trees," he told James Bracey on Wide World of Sports' Six Tackles with Gus podcast.
"They can't see it spiralling out of control, where people from the outside are looking at it like, 'Wow, look at what's happening here'.
"Internally, you're trying to band-aid over things and put out little fires and keep things moving along... then you have another bad day or a bad half and that allows all the other conjecture - you drop a key player, you drop a senior player, you change a captain.
"You do all these things internally that you think are the right things to do and you really need to sit back from the outside and look at it and get to the real root of the problem as you're trying to get out of it.
"I feel for them (Tigers). I feel for a lot of the clubs at the moment who struggle - it must be a torment for them out on the field, being beaten by 50 and 60 points and knowing you're not competitive."
Making particular note of two of the club's recent performances - last week's loss to South Sydney and the Round Five defeat at the hands of North Queensland - Gould said it's a concerning sign the club was thrashed in both first halves before turning things around in the second period.
The former NSW Origin coach claims the club's inability to stay on top during both the first and second half are signs of having "no resilience".
"The Tigers, they look like a club really under stress, they play like they're under stress. They never look comfortable," Gould added.
"I remember a game this year, they were raging hot favourites the day they were going to pay tribute to Tommy Raudonikis at Leichhardt Oval, and they were playing the Cowboys who hadn't beaten anyone.
"They were down by 26 or 28 points at half-time. I had a similar feeling about it watching them [against South Sydney] on the weekend - where they go out with all good intention, then it just prickles like a balloon or one little mistake or one little try, then all of a sudden it's an avalanche.
"They can't deal with it until they can get back with the coach at half-time. In both of those games, they've come out and had strong second halves.
"Which means, whatever he said to them at half-time must have had an effect. They must have been able to regroup, take a breath, calm down and then come back and start to apply themselves better.
"But why can't they do that with themselves on the field? It seems a lot of these teams mentally, it's all too hard for them. Once they get on the wrong end of a team with talent who can score the points, there's no resilience until next week or the second half, or whenever they can regroup and come again.
"That's not the signs of a professional footballer or a professional team. Attitude control and mental control is a key part of being a professional athlete."
One of the big talking points from the Tigers' loss to the Rabbitohs last weekend was the club's sudden change of its defensive structure.
The Tigers during that match trailed by 26 points at the main break after showcasing a defensive structure in which Parramatta great Peter Sterling said: "I haven't seen this kind of defence before... I've never seen a team stand still and then reverse before the play gets to them. It's an invitation."
Gould echoed similar thoughts and said Maguire's decision to change the defensive systems was the wrong thing to do given the position the Tigers are currently in.
"Sometimes they have some good results, but too often we see performances like that on the weekend. But what made it worse on the weekend was the revelation prior to the game, that the coach had changed the defensive structure for the team," Gould said.
"That's too hard to do in seven days. It's almost impossible to do against one of the top sides.
"What he was probably saying to them, mentally before the game, is that our defence can't cope with Souths, so we need to change something up very quickly.
"You probably get one or two sessions to educate them on it and it just fell apart. They didn't know what they were doing. They really didn't know what they were doing.
"Over time, he might be right, that might be the best defensive system for those players, but it's going to take a lot longer than a couple of sessions to turn it around and change it.
"You probably wouldn't change it against the better sides like that, you've got to work with what you're training week in and week out. What they did on the weekend wasn't right for the South Sydney game."
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from WWOS https://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/wests-tigers-issues-michael-maguire-phil-gould-breaks-it-down/3466089e-fb32-4169-9f3c-d08354a31bd3
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