Garry Jack believes Wests Tigers powerbrokers need to take more accountability for recent shortcomings at Leichhardt.
Jack, a legend of the club as one of Balmain’s greatest ever players, believes CEO Justin Pascoe is most at fault for the poor nature in which the club is supposedly run.
With the Tigers likely to sack coach Michael Maguire, Jack believes it’s instead Pascoe and General Manager of Football Adam Hartigan who should be feeling the heat.
Speaking on SEN 1170 Higher Ground, Jack says the club’s call to potentially axe Maguire is so Pascoe and Hartigan protect themselves by shifting the blame onto the coach.
“Why do they want to sack him? It’s to protect their own backsides,” Jack explained.
“If anyone’s got to go, it’s got to be Justin Pascoe and Adam Hartigan, they’re the ones in charge of recruitment and retention.
“You can’t blame the coach when last year you’ve re-signed him for another two years.
“They need to take a lot of responsibility for what has happened.
“If these guys were spending their own money I think they’d be a lot more careful with who comes in and who they sack.”
Jack believes everyone else at the club has been accountable for poor results, except for the CEO and recruitment staff.
“He (Pascoe) did the review last year, and the side’s gone backwards,” Jack said.
“Everyone’s accountable, the coach is accountable, the players are accountable … but the CEO and recruitment guys aren’t accountable.
“Well, they have to be accountable because they recruited the players that are playing, and obviously, it’s not working.”
While Jack defended Maguire, he conceded that the team’s on-field performance is “just not good enough”, but he believes part of the blame needs to be shifted away from the coach and playing group.
“It just seems like a revolving door at the Tigers, it happened with Jason Taylor and Mick Potter,” Jack said.
“I do feel a little bit sorry for Michael Maguire, he’s a defensive coach, but you rest on the performances of your team and they’ve had eight wins and 16 losses.
“We’re the second worst defensive side in the competition, which is terrible, seven times have scored 40 or more points against us, including the day the Storm beat us 66-6.
“There’s some major problems at the club - if not for the good of the draw when we played the Panthers with all their best players tied up with Origin, we would’ve finished second last with the Broncos.
“It’s just not good enough, and it’s easy to blame the coach and the players, but the same people are making the same mistakes for the last six years since Justin Pascoe’s been there.
“It hasn’t gotten any better, it’s gotten worse.”
Listen to the full chat here.