The Big Four? The Tigers ought to be have been wary of indulging oversized reputations

What worlds you could change, what great things you could do, if only you were part of a Big Four.

Or, if you were playing at the Wests Tigers, you could even change the world if you found a Big Three, say, and attached yourself to them (looking at you, Mitchell Moses).

Or, to be perfectly accurate about the Tigers all you'd really need is a Big One (Aaron Woods), plus a Big Three-Quarters (James Tedesco), with a couple of promising youngsters, and if they all have the same manager it doesn't really matter if they're only a Big Two And A Half when they're all added up, they can start calling the shots.

Anyway, enough about the Tigers' four off-contract players. (Off-contract used to mean a league player was off-contract. Now, despite the evidence of the past two weeks which suggests that the Big Two and A Half are already off-contract, 'off-contract' means they will be off-contract at some foreseeable point in the future and therefore unable to sign any contract until the coaching and playing roster has been set in stone for the next decade. Good luck with that one. And spare a thought for Jason Taylor, who, in relation to his board, has suffered the fate of Australians in relation to the Rudd-Gillard-Abbott-Turnbull-Baird-Barnett-Weatherall governments – that is, trying to battle on under a leadership that will make a hard decision, commit to it, hang tough, hang tough, hang tough, and, once they've survived all the imaginable opprobrium for their principled stance, go completely to water. That board backed Taylor 100 per cent, right up to the moment they threw him under a bus.)

Where did this Big Four thing come from exactly? Someone told me the four Tigers had a third-party agreement with a chain of caravan parks, but this appears to have no foundation, not even a powered site with nearby amenities. Nor was it a reference to "Big Fore", which is a description of my current golf game.

People do like Big Numbers. The original Big Three were Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill at the Yalta conference. In sport, the equivalent to Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill were Palmer, Nicklaus and Player. In those days, you looked up to Big Threes and didn't mess with them by making them Big Fours. Men's tennis really started to go downhill when the Big Two (Federer and Nadal) let in a Big Third (Djokovic, or, as the Irish would call him, a Big T'ird), and once Andy Murray demanded inclusion in a Big Four, that was that.

The NRL has had a legitimate Big Three in Cameron Smith, Cooper Cronk and Billy Slater at the Melbourne Storm. That Big Three had to be taken seriously because it didn't matter who else the Storm circulated through their remaining 14 playing slots, the footballing and leadership skills of their Big Three elevated all of those around them. It's been a remarkable achievement that every time the Storm have lost one of their key supporting actors – Ryan Hoffman, Gareth Widdop, Blake Green, Kevin Proctor – it hasn't disrupted the machine at all, because the Big Three have created teams around them. That's a legit Big Three, their importance underscored by the tendency of those supporting actors, when they go to other clubs, to sink towards Big Nothingness.

But do any groups of players, aside from the Storm's Three, really merit being called Big Anythings? The Cowboys have a Big One, the best player in the game. But they have plenty of Big Others. The Sharks won the premiership last year by having a Big None – an ensemble of above-average footballers playing for one another. The Titans did well with that Big None ethos until they picked up a Big Swinging something, and fell out of whack. The Canberra Raiders, if they are to win the premiership this year, will be relying on their Big Everything, but that's just because they're … all … big.

Maybe in league all these attempts to create Big Whatevers are just a Big Crock, and what has been the Tigers' undoing is that, no matter who's to blame for starting the whole Big Four Farce and whoever believes it, they turned into a team within a team: a clique of players who are treated differently from the rest. Aside from Melbourne, where the water is different, the idea of a team-within-a-team has seldom been a recipe for success. And in the Tigers' case, it hasn't even been a recipe for squeaking into eighth place and celebrating the goal of being part of '"finals footy". (And on that point: can someone explain why it's such a bigger achievement to get knocked out in the first week of the finals as opposed to the week before? Why should making up the numbers in the top eight for a week or two be anyone's dream?)

What's happened this week is a pity for the Tigers, a pity for Taylor and a pity for Robbie Farah, who had achieved more than the Big Four put together but was somehow turned into collateral damage. For the game as a whole, it's also a pity, as it diverts attention from the big issues. Such as, why is there no longer any such thing as a forward pass, especially from dummy-half? Why, on the other hand, does a player only have to drop the ball for it to be called a knock-on? And why the hell are club football staff put in the intolerable position of having to make the call on whether to take players off for head injury assessments? Who ever thought that was a workable idea? And how is it that the quality of the attack in this year's NRL is so damn good – is it a player-led revolution against coaches and boring second-man plays, or what? Anyway, don't get me started, I'll turn into a Big Bore. The league is great this year, and bigger than ever before.