Magpies faction pushing to bring Western Suburbs back to NRL – and it could ‘destroy the Tigers’

There is a coup building at the Wests Tigers joint venture, with Magpies-sided faction reportedly looking to bring the Western Suburbs back into the NRL at the expense of the Balmain side of the ‘unified’ rugby league club.

Already, the Holman Barnes Group have axed chairman Barry O’Farrell and three independent directors, Annabelle Williams, Charlie Viola and Michelle McDowell, in a move that basically leaves them in full control.

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For those still catching up, the Holman Barnes Group wields 90% ownership of the joint venture. The group’s time at the top has been plagued by boardroom infighting between the Balmain and Western Suburbs sides of the club for many years; the Tigers have famously failed to make the NRL finals for more than a decade under the same ownership group.

“It was admitted to me directly by a fella who is now a director of the West Magpies that the ultimate aim was to return the Wests Magpies to the NRL,” Hagipantelis said on SEN Breakfast on Tuesday. “I know there were some quiet discussions not too long ago about extracting Balmain from the Wests Tigers and returning to the State Cup.”

Now it’s made what’s already being lashed as a “brain fart,” declaring they were forced to sack O’Farrell and others after being “left in the dark on commercially sensitive announcements.” (That, for the record, was the colour of the 2026 jersey.)

Things have gotten so murky behind the scenes that Peter V’Landys and the NRL have started investigating.

Reigning CEO Shane Richardson, widely regarded as having been steering the Tigers in the right direction alongside O’Farrell, is now tossing up whether he wants to hand in the keys and resign before preseason gets properly started.

It was enough for Hagipantelis to take aim at them directly in the same radio show: “They should have no engagement in the running of a football club,” he said. “They should confine themselves to the fishing club, sewing or tennis club. They run leagues clubs very well, and food and beverage very well. The tensions of 1999 and the forced merger remain to this day.”

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Elsewhere, the co-author of a 2023 report on the Wests Tigers’ governance, Gary Bernier – that report led the Holman Barnes Group to recruit the four independent board members in January – has today called on the NRL to take direct control of the Wests Tigers through an administrator “to protect the NRL’s ambition to be a global game.”

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“This behaviour is not consistent with that, in my view,” Barnier told the SMH today. “I don’t say it lightly, I say it because of my concern that this will disrupt Wests Tigers so fundamentally that it will put them back for another decade.

“It seems to me there is a continued desire to bring back Wests Magpies at all costs, including the destruction of Wests Tigers if necessary.”