This is true: The last thing the Wests Tigers need is…………….

The Dragons, a similarly clunky joint venture, have thrown their lot in with the Illawarra side, predominantly training there, with most of their players living in the area.

New coach Shane Flanagan has committed to moving some aspects of the club back to Kogarah, but in practice, they threw their lot in with the Steelers long ago.

The Tigers, however, remain half-pregnant. They just opened a new Centre of Excellence at Concord – nothing wrong with that – and committed to splitting their games between Campbelltown and Leichhardt, which at least ended the farce of playing at Homebush and Parramatta, two grounds indelibly linked with other teams.

The split is currently five and five, but realistically, it should probably be seven to Campbelltown and three to the Inner West. Moreover, they should be looking at who they face where, as well as when.

Then again, they’ve not won there since June 2020, an eight-game streak, so perhaps they would do well to stay away.

Across the last two years since fans returned following Covid, Macarthur fans have seen Manly twice, but out of Sydney opposition on all other occasions. The likes of Penrith, Parramatta, St George Illawarra, Canterbury and Souths – have all been elsewhere.

The Dogs last visited in 2019, the Panthers in 2017, the Dragons in 2015, the Eels in 2012 and Souths, who are thought to be the next best supported team in the region, have never played there in the 21st century.

Canterbury have played at Leichhardt – further from their fans – since they last played in Campbelltown, as have Parra, Penrith and Souths, though theirs was a behind-closed-doors game during Covid.

There’s an argument that moving fixtures to bigger stadiums helps get more fans in, but only one Wests Tigers home game against Souths has had an attendance higher than the capacity in Leumeah in the last decade, and they’ve not cracked Campbelltown’s 17,500 limit against the Dogs since 2015.

Short-changed southwest fans have also got their Tigers fix in clusters, with two games in June 2023.

Indeed, between the Tigers’ last game in mid-June and Macarthur’s AFC Cup tie against the wonderfully-named Dynamic Herb Cefu of the Philippines this Thursday passed, there wasn’t a single elite sporting event there at all.

Even their NRLW fixture, scheduled for mid-September, had to be moved because of bushfire smoke.

Part of that absence was due to the FIFA Women’s World Cup, but the years before that weren’t. In 2022, they got three games in 2022 in March, then June, then August, with months between events. In terms of building a fanbase with a culture of going to games, good luck.

For the Tigers, this is the biggest threat. Macarthur FC are throwing money at the region and play there all the time, with a commitment to that area and that area only.

As much as the region is rusted-on rugby league country at the moment, the projected population growth is not necessarily from the demographics that it once was, with more recent migrants with no tradition of the sport – but a clear understanding of soccer.

Over half of the population were both abroad, and the largest constituent group from a rugby-playing nation was 2% from Fiji, a long way behind Southeast Asian nations, Arab nations, South America and China. It’s not a given that these people will be rugby league fans at all, let alone follow the Wests Tigers.

Plenty has been written about the pathways, and the kids that the Tigers lose to other clubs from what should be their heartlands. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t have the demographic advantages that Penrith and Parramatta have, or indeed, the Warriors or Broncos.

One need only look at Manly, 50km away, to see how many kids the area produces. Currently, however, none of these kids grow up wanting to play for the Tigers, and that comes down to the other side of the game, the off-field.

Leichhardt is the past and Campbelltown, just like it was in 2000, is the future. Liverpool should not even enter into the thinking at the club. But, like everything else with the Tigers, it’s an argument being had out in public, with stakeholders pulling in every direction.

Until that part changes, they’ll never change the orientation of the club, and until the orientation changes, they’ll never be successful.