On Monday as late as 6pm as NRL360 was about to go to air Wests Tigers director of football Tim Sheens assured Fox Sports there was no change to the Michael Maguire situation leading into round 14.

Maguire would be coaching the side against Manly at Campbelltown on Sunday, we were told.

This was in spite of word going around the game Maguire was getting tapped on the shoulder at Concord on Tuesday.

By the time NRL360 had finished at 7.30pm the Wests Tigers powerbrokers phones had gone into meltdown and moves were afoot to get rid of Madge effective immediately.

Maguire is a good man who walked into an extremely challenging scenario at Concord and the death-by-a-thousand cuts speculation surrounding his position had simply become too much.

NRL360 co-host Paul Kent spoke to Maguire in an ad break while the show was still live on air on Monday and the coach was none the wiser about the moves afoot to remove him.

The scenario was not fair on a coach who has poured his heart and soul into trying to fix Wests Tigers.

Professional sport is a results based business and the reality is the Tigers were going backwards under Maguire.

The decision needed to be made but the dithering behind-the-scenes had become too much.

The coach who ended a 43-season premiership drought at South Sydney will at least walk away with an $800,000 handshake.

Maguire was signed until the end of 2023 but the situation had simply become untenable.

The reality is it was probably untenable from the time wooden spoon club Canterbury-Bankstown beat the Tigers 38-0 in round 25 last August leading into an all-encompassing internal review where the club again mixed up its messages.

Several media types were backgrounded by a club official at the time that it was going to be all over for Maguire.

Then Maguire presented to the committee formed to oversee the internal review and put it on them about information being leaked to the media.

The end result was Madge survived for another off season and the opening 13 rounds of 2022 but the writing was always on the wall after the Tigers started the season 0-5.

In the short term Brett Kimmorley will come in as a caretaker coach while Sheens sits back and works out the best solution to get the Tigers away from the bottom half of the ladder.

After going through four coaches since sacking Sheens at the end of 2012 this is easily the most important decision in the Wests Tigers history dating back to their first year in the NRL in 2000.