{"id":344905,"date":"2025-12-13T07:40:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T07:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344905\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T07:40:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T07:40:18","slug":"nrl-news-2025-wests-tigers-fans-protest-inner-west-mayor-darcy-byrne-comments-holman-barnes-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344905\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2025 | Wests Tigers fans protest; Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne comments; Holman Barnes Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of Wests Tigers<\/a> fans met at Pratten Park Bowling Club to rally against the Holman Barnes Group (HBG) after weeks of turmoil<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On December 1, four independent directors on the Wests Tigers board were sacked<\/a> by majority owners HBG, setting off a chaotic chain of events.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath, chief executive officer Shane Richardson quit the club<\/a> before three of those four directors were returned to their roles through NRL intervention<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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HBG chairman and Tigers director, Dennis Burgess, also quit the board<\/a> before coach Benji Marshall was given a five-year extension<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fans had been threatening a protest since the removal of the four independent directors, and it still went ahead despite the reversal.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A Tigers fan holds up a flyer calling for the Holman Barnes Group to be held accountable.\u00a0Seven<\/p>\n

Originally, the plan was to march from Pratten Park to Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, which is run by HBG. However, that idea was abandoned.<\/p>\n

Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne passionately addressed the crowd at Pratten Park and announced the formation of a new fans group, Wests Tigers Unite.<\/p>\n

“Today I announce that we will form Wests Tigers Unite, a new grassroots organisation to give fans a real say at Wests Tigers,” he said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“We will draw from the successful examples around the world of fans’ associations at different sports that have been set up when this sort of situation occurs.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wests Tigers fans.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n

Flyers with QR codes for the fan group were sent around at the event.<\/p>\n

Police were present at Pratten Park, but no incidents were recorded. <\/p>\n

Wests Tigers has had to battle constant off-field problems ever since the merger between Balmain and Western Suburbs in 1999. <\/p>\n

A premiership in 2005 quelled concerns for a short period but the club’s last finals appearance was in 2011. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of Wests Tigers fans met at Pratten Park Bowling Club to rally against the Holman Barnes Group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-344905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}