I’ve suffered for the Tigers, but I can’t pick the good guys in this battle

August 13, 2026 — 5:00am

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The never-ending saga of the former Balmain Leagues Club in Rozelle is both parable and metaphor. For Sydney, it is a story of how our view of development in the mid-2010s helped to shape our current housing predicament. And for Tigers fans like me, it is the physical embodiment of our club’s long and painful descent into being the worst professional sporting club in Australia.

This week, the Herald revealed that a standoff between developer Perifa and Wests Tigers’ owners, the Holman Barnes Group, threatens to extend the two-decade saga over the redevelopment of the Victoria Road site and the attempt to resurrect the leagues club where Benji Marshall and co celebrated the club’s only premiership in 2005.

The dispute relates, basically, to a tit-for-tat over the size and cost of a future club within the $285 million mixed-use development. Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne has written to Perifa managing director Fabrizio Perilli to note that the approval depends on the Tigers operating a club at the site. Perilli says Byrne is jumping at shadows. The Holman Barnes Group says it still wants a club at the site, but will it own the club or pay rent to secure it? It will be owner or tenant, says Perilli.

But leaving aside the specifics of that entanglement for a moment, the history of the troubled development is an interesting cautionary tale. It is also, to be honest, just another brick in the wall for the Wests Tigers fan base, for whom........

© The Sydney Morning Herald