Calls are growing louder for Wests Tigers head of football Tim Sheens to take over the club’s vacant head coaching role.
Sheens, 71, hasn’t coached at NRL level since 2012, but is widely respected having led the Raiders to three titles in the 90s and the Tigers to their last premiership in 2005.
While he’s since shifted into an all-encompassing role, many believe it’d make sense for him to take over the club’s top job with Brett Kimmorley currently coaching on an interim basis.
Although Sheens himself told The Sydney Morning Herald that he was looking to make an appointment before the end of the year, chief sports writer Andrew Webster believes the conjecture surrounding his future is becoming somewhat of a circus.
“It’s a circus around Tim Sheens and whether he’s going to coach or not,” Webster said on SEN 1170 The Run Home.
“The reporters that are reporting that he’s in the frame for it, they’re not making it up, it’s coming from somewhere.
“I’ve talked to Tim Sheens about it even this week and he seems to run a line through the whole notion of coaching the Wests Tigers and that they’re keen to make an appointment before the end of the year.
“Again, Noddy is trying to prepare a team with all that noise going on.
“It’s not pretty, and good on Luke Brooks for standing his ground.”
Former Wests Tiger Joel Caine asked Webster whether Sheens had officially come out to distance himself from the role publicly.
Webster confirmed that Sheens had yet to do so, to which Caine said: “He has to Webby.
“We can’t keep living on the back of this 2005 team, yes it was great for the Tigers but we’ve had 17 premierships going to other clubs.
“We’ve got to give up on the 2005 excitement.
“He’s got to come out and say, ‘I’m here to oversee, I’m not going to coach anymore, I haven’t coached at this level for a long time, much has changed. I have a great deal to give to this club but it’s not coaching’.
“We need to come out with that immediately to stop this noise around the bloody club.”
Sheens was sacked as head coach of the Tigers in 2012, which makes any potential reappointment a decade later even more surprising.
It’s believed the club’s shortlist of candidates includes Kimmorley, Josh Hannay, Kristian Woolf, Shane Flanagan, Dean Young and John Morris.
The Tigers next face the Eels at Leichhardt Oval on Saturday night.
Listen to The Run Home with Joel & Fletch every weekday live from 3-6pm on SEN 1170.