IN a throwback to the glory days of the late ’70s and early ’80s, Western Suburbs will once again wear black and white jerseys emblazoned with the iconic Victa name in 2018.

It’s just the latest in a long chain of events that has started to redress the power balance struck when the Magpies were forced into an uneasy marriage with Balmain to take the field as the Wests Tigers for the first time in 2000.

Almost immediately, dyed in the wool Western Suburbs fans were disenfranchised, with their club cast as the ugly stepsister in a merger that strongly favoured the Tigers.

Eighteen years later and Balmain’s position of strength within the Wests Tigers has slowly but surely eroded, with financial mismanagement leading to a loss of power at board level.

Round 19

The next step in the changing dynamic will involve more visible changes, starting at NSW Cup level, where the Wests Tigers feeder side will in 2018 play as the Western Suburbs Magpies and wear a black-and-white strip sponsored by Victa.

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The new Western Suburbs jersey with Victa emblazoned. Source: Supplied

It’s a symbolic move that excites former Magpies coach Roy Masters, who was at the helm when the partnership with Victa was first struck, at a time when the club was the pride of western Sydney.

“In the late ’70s there was tremendous pride attached to any club with a sponsorship,” Masters told foxsports.com.au.

“It was a partnership that derived enormous pride because there were very few in those days. “You considered it a badge of honour that someone was good enough ... and we were fortunate that at the time Victa was looking to come on board with a rugby league side, we had one of the best.”

Masters recalls with delight how Victa settled on sponsoring Western Suburbs instead of Cronulla, based on a high-stakes 1978 clash that put the Magpies on top of the table.

Unbeknown to Masters and the Wests hierarchy, the sponsorship would have instead been offered to Cronulla had his side lost that day.

The good old days of face slapping in the dressing room. Source: News Corp Australia

Wests captain Tommy Raudonikis has his face slapped by hooker Ray Brown. Source: News Corp Australia

In fact, 1978 was the last year the Magpies won the minor premiership — or any other silverware of significance. Wooden spoons followed in 1983, 1984, 1987, 1988, 1998 and 1999, which goes some way to explaining the fall from grace of the foundation club and why it was easy pickings for the Balmain side of the joint venture when the clubs first merged.

“People largely called the Wests Tigers ‘Balmain’ and the spokesmen for the team tended to be (Balmain legends) Benny (Elias) and Sirro (Paul Sironen) and Blocker (Steve Roach) and Wests didn’t seem to get much of a mention,” Masters contends.

“Even the NRL called the team the Tigers, they didn’t call them the Wests Tigers in any of their literature. And so Wests were really shut out for about 15 years.”

But money is power and for the Wests Tigers these days, that flows almost exclusively from the Magpies’ side.

Still, many fans, particularly of the younger generation, know their team as ‘the Tigers’ and Masters expects the powerful Western Suburbs directors on the board to be sensitive to that.

“The majority of the board members are Wests people, as opposed to Tigers people, but in the eyes of the NRL they would consider them to be 50/50 partners, even though that’s not reality,” Masters said.

“The NRL would not under any circumstances want to lose any of the traditional Balmain Tigers supporters, so they are probably not facing up to the reality of what the modern day situation is — but they’ve got pretty good commercial reasons for it, for not wanting to alienate the traditional Balmain supporters or those who continue to live in the inner-west of Sydney — you know, Balmain, Rozelle, Drummoyne, those kinds of suburbs.

“There’ll be Magpie people that would say we’re never ever going to get back what we had until the team is called the Magpies as opposed to Wests Tigers, but that will never happen because the NRL will never allow it to happen and they’re the ones who hand out the franchises and they wouldn’t allow that to be the case, they would insist on the Tigers having a name, I’m sure.

“And for that matter, you’ve got to remember there’s a whole generation of people, of kids, who are now 18 and have never known the team as anything other than the Wests Tigers, so to cut out the Tiger would be to disenfranchise that young generation.”

The one concession Masters would like to see made is that the Wests Tigers start playing more games out of Campbelltown, as opposed to Leichhardt and ANZ Stadium.

“I’m a very strong believer we should reduce the games at Leichhardt, Homebush and the new Parramatta Stadium,” Masters said.

“I’d want more games out at Campbelltown at a greatly enhanced stadium in Campbelltown. There’s a nursery of talent out there and I don’t believe it’s been given sufficient identity.

“And we’ve got to curb the incursions of the AFL making inroads in that territory.

“That’s one of the reasons Wests will base, as much as possible, their State Cup team out at Campbelltown, to give their people a sense of identity and belonging to a club that is their own.”