Many Tigers fans have felt older than they actually are because of the team’s recentDEAL problems; two consecutive wooden spoon awards and the longest finals drought in the league can do that.
Look no further than Tallyn da Silva, though, if you’re a long-suffering supporter of joint ventures and genuinely want a sight of your own mortality.
As they say in the classics, Da Silva is a good man. A free-running hooker who is one of the best of a talented group of Tigers youngsters coming through the ranks, da Silva created history as one of the club’s youngest players when, just a few months after turning 18, he made his NRL debut in the middle of the previous season.
The fact that the first game was played in Campbelltown Stadium is significant because da Silva is a true Campbelltown native who has been a Tiger all of his life.
As they say in the classics, Da Silva is a good man. A free-running hooker who is one of the best of a talented group of Tigers youngsters coming through the ranks, da Silva created history as one of the club’s youngest players when, just a few months after turning 18, he made his NRL debut in the middle of the previous season.
The fact that the first game was played in Campbelltown Stadium is significant because da Silva is a true Campbelltown native who has been a Tiger all of his life.
He was born in April 2005, just under six months before the biggest night in the club’s history—the victory they constantly strive to imitate, the illustrious era they wish to recreate, the peak they never stop seeking.
Da Silva belongs to a generation of Tigers players who barely remember the team’s glory days. When they competed in their last final in 2011, he was six years old.
Even the men who were there are beginning to dwindle away; the only two current players in the league who have played for the Tigers in a semifinal are Aaron Woods and Ben Murdoch-Masila.
These are sobering facts for particular age fans. In the waiting for their team to win, boys have developed into men.
