Not long ago, I wrote about the loyalty of the Wests Tigers fan base – how they continued to show up, week after week, despite poor results, constant changes, and headlines that rarely seemed positive. It was a reminder that faithfulness doesn’t disappear when things get hard. If anything, it’s revealed there.
But six rounds into this season, there’s another question worth asking.
What about the team themselves?
Here they are, sitting second on the ladder, level on points with the Penrith Panthers – the benchmark of the competition in recent years. And they’ve done it not in a season of calm and clarity, but in the middle of what still feels, at times, like uncertainty.
While the headlines around the board have quietened, the effects of that instability don’t just disappear overnight. There’s still a sense that things are settling – rather than settled.
So how have they managed to get here?
Because if we’re honest, most of us tend to wait for things to settle before we expect growth. We tell ourselves that once life is a bit less chaotic – once work slows down, once relationships are smoother, once everything feels more “in order” – then we’ll start to improve, to focus, to grow.
But the Tigers are challenging that idea in real time.
They haven’t waited for perfect conditions. They’ve grown in the middle of imperfect ones.
And that’s where the deeper lesson lies.
In the spiritual life, we can fall into the trap of thinking that holiness requires ideal circumstances. That we need clarity, structure, and stability before we can really commit.
But more often than not, that moment never fully arrives. Life remains busy. People remain imperfect. Situations remain, at times, messy.
Yet grace doesn’t wait.
God doesn’t hold off working in our lives until everything around us is neatly in place. In fact, He often does His best work right in the middle of the chaos – not by instantly removing it, but by bringing something good out of it.
That’s what stands out about this Tigers side.
They haven’t denied the noise around them. They haven’t pretended everything is perfect. But they also haven’t used it as an excuse. In fact, they haven’t even been focused on it.
And there’s a lesson in that alone. In his letter to the Colossians, Saint Paul urges us to “set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
That doesn’t mean ignoring reality – but it does mean refusing to be consumed by what’s temporary. It means keeping our focus on something greater, even when everything around us feels unsettled.
It would have been easy for the Tigers to do the opposite – to point to instability, to distractions, to everything happening off the field, and allow that to justify inconsistency on it. Instead, they’ve chosen something else. They’ve chosen to focus, to commit, and to grow anyway.
And that choice matters.
Because growth – whether in sport or in faith – isn’t something that just happens to us when conditions are right. It’s something we participate in, often in spite of those conditions.
The Tigers’ start to the season is a reminder that we don’t need to wait for everything in our lives to be resolved before becoming who we’re called to be. We don’t need perfect structures, perfect environments, or perfect people.
We simply need to respond.
Sometimes, that response happens not when everything finally makes sense – but right in the middle of when it doesn’t.
