NRL 2020: Campo’s Corner previews the Roosters, Raiders, Rabbitohs and Melbourne Storm
Latrell Mitchell has become one of rugby league’s biggest stars, but the spotlight on him has become so bright it threatens to burn.
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We’ve made it everybody.
The long, horrible, rugby league-less summer is over, and the greatest game of all is just about back.
Time to stop not thinking about the grand final and sink our teeth into the 2020 season, and all the things that might happen.
Campo’s Corner returns with a four-part season preview that touches on every NRL club, and tries, once again, to decide who will drink from the keg of glory and take home the title this year.
Please remember that the real premiership is the friends we make along the way.
PART ONE: Dragons need finals to stop fan revolt
PART TWO: How Mitch Barnett explains the nights
PART THREE: The ceiling is the roof for Manly
SOUTH SYDNEY RABBITOHS
Latrell Mitchell has always done the big things very well.
It’s a cliche to say a player is made for the big moments, or that he plays well on the biggest stage, but with Mitchell it’s truer than most.
Mitchell does big things, and big things happen to him. Think about his matchwinning try against the Broncos in the 2017 finals, his evisceration of Will Chambers in the 2018 Origin series, his field goal against Melbourne last year in golden point, or the offload that won the Roosters the grand final in what proved to be his final game for the club.
Because the big things always seem to happen to Mitchell, he has become a star. He attracts hyperbole by his very nature – like after his 26-point effort against the Tigers last year, when he was hailed by some as the best player in the game. Not the best centre, not the best young talent, the best in the game, full stop.
But such adulation has another side, and the pendulum swung back on Mitchell after he was dropped from the New South Wales side following a defeat in Origin I of 2019. Chambers got the better of him that night because he resisted the temptation to challenge Mitchell’s aggression with his own. The Queenslander did not allow himself to be drawn into a battle of brawn, because Chambers can’t beat Mitchell that way. The way he can beat him, and the way he did that night was through the little things. Things like changing his line when a pass was still in the air, or altering his angle of contact ever so slightly.
After Mitchell was dropped, it felt like the whole game turned on him. He was the best player in the game no longer, now he was “lazy” and lacking motivation and pride in the jersey and all sorts of other, heinous qualities. Mitchell had not changed. He was the same player before Origin I as he was after it – an incredible attacking force, for whom anything was possible and with capabilities other players could only dream of, but who could also sometimes wait for a game to come to him rather than going and getting it. There was nothing wrong with Mitchell being this way. Even after everything has happened to him, he is still just 22 years old. He has an entire career to improve, and even if he never does he’s still pretty handy.
Because this is the internet age and because this is rugby league, things spiralled quickly.
Mitchell improved in every attacking metric from 2018 to 2019, and he was on track to become just the third ever player to score 300 points in a season before a slight downturn in his pointscoring late in the season. But the praise of a season before was harder to come by. So often rugby league people, for whatever reason, yearn to tear their idols down.
Case in point was Mitchell’s protracted exit from the Roosters and quest for a new club, the saga of which dominated much of the off-season. The reason it was so ubiquitous was simple – Mitchell ignites reaction. One way or the other, he inspires people to land on one side of a line, and never the two shall meet.
There’s no way of knowing why Mitchell inspires such passion. Maybe it’s because of his aforementioned penchant for those big moments. Maybe it’s because he seems like such a natural star, and always has. Maybe he’s just a media creation.
Matty Johns is back with his No.1 podcast! He delves into all the big issues facing the NRL in season 2020 including the clubs and coaches under the most scrutiny.
Maybe it’s because he’s Indigenous and fiercely proud of it. My money is on a combination of all of them.
Regardless, inspire these feelings he does, and as such the story of South Sydney in 2020 will also be the Latrell Mitchell story. The Rabbitohs have a fine roster, and particularly a sparkling backline, but so much of the discussion will begin and end with Mitchell. It will start with the match against the Sharks on Saturday and it will not end until Mitchell is crowned the best player in the game once again or he gets shifted back to the centres because the fullback experiment has failed. That’s how it works when it comes to Mitchell. It has to be the big things.
The truth is always more subtle, and the truth of Mitchell’s move to fullback is it will take time either way. Mitchell has said he wants to revolutionise the position for big fullbacks, and the comparisons to Greg Inglis, which do Inglis a disservice because he was one of a kind and do the same to Mitchell because it creates an impossible standard for him to match, have flared up again.
Mitchell can be a success at fullback, but it won’t happen overnight because he needs to learn how to master the little things. There should be no doubt in Mitchell’s ability to bust the defence open and run 60 metres to score, or his skills as a ballplayer or anything like that.
But can Mitchell cope with taking 20 carries a game, as well as covering more ground than any other player on the field? Can he have the mental discipline to perform under fatigue, and keep that grace under pressure when he’s getting targeted? Mitchell could get away with his shortcomings at centre, but at fullback they will be exposed and tested like never before.
Mitchell can learn these things without doubt, but they don’t happen overnight.
If I was putting money down, I would say he has a slowish start in his new position, but by mid-season he will have made plenty of progress, which will continue as the year goes on. But this is Latrell Mitchell we’re talking about – he just won’t have that kind of time, because the big things always happen to him and the spotlight that comes with those things shines so bright it can burn.
THE TEAM
If Souths had Jai Arrow coming this year instead of 2021 they’d be my pick to win the premiership, but he’s not and the Rabbitohs middle looks a little bit skinny as a result.
In 2019 Sam Burgess was still as good a forward as anybody could find, but he was not the strength which in the old days moved heaven and earth. Cameron Murray emerged as the club’s best forward, but Liam Knight’s improvement was just as impressive. With Murray moving to an edge, Knight is now the most important middle at the club, a heavy ask for a player who was bouncing between clubs less than two years ago.
He’s got the ability to do it, but aside from another big improver from last year in Tevita Tatola, and Tom Burgess, there’s not a whole lot of experienced support. Regardless, Wayne Bennett might throw us all off by playing Murray in the middle from the 20th minute or so, and that would make sense given a second-rower of Ethan Lowe’s calibre will be on the bench.
Every team’s forward pack is important, but Souths rely on theirs more than most because when their forwards are on top it maximises the impact Damien Cook can have on a match. Cook’s playmaking has steadily improved through his first grade career, but his best weapon will always be his running game and that hits full bloom when Souths control the middle. It’s much harder for Cook to impose himself on a match when the forwards are on the back foot – as it is for just about every hooker who isn’t Cameron Smith or Josh Hodgson.
James Roberts is a player worth watching intently. He never really got going last year, for Brisbane or Souths, as his nagging Achilles injuries blunted his effectiveness. It’s a small sample size, but his work in the pre-season has been very handy – particularly in the All Stars game, when he defended and communicated very well, and took an active leadership role in what was a fiery encounter. I’ll admit I’m a sucker for a player with unique qualities such as Roberts possesses, but a strong comeback season is very possible.
THE TIP
The Rabbitohs are among the teams I think can win the premiership, assuming the Mitchell move works out the way they want. The questions around their forward pack are legitimate, but Bennett has gotten more out of less in the past. Anything short of the top four is below their full capabilities.
MELBOURNE STORM
Here’s some stats about Melbourne in 2019 that you should find very impressive.
They lost four games in the regular season – that’s only happened five times since 1998. In doing so, the Storm matched their feat from 2006, their year of emergence when they lost the grand final, and 2017, the closest they will ever come to finding the perfection they crave. Only two teams have managed to go the full regular season while losing fewer games – they are the mighty and doomed 2001 Parramatta Eels, the most prolific attacking team in the history of rugby league in this country, and the 2007 Storm, who were so ludicrously overpowered it almost didn’t seem real (and in 2010, of course, we found out it wasn’t).
The 2019 Storm lost their four regular season matches by one point, two points, one point and four points. Two of those losses were in golden point, and two of them were against the sides who would make the grand final. Only three times all season did they concede more than 20 points in a match and they were in the top four for all but one week of the regular season, and they were in top spot for 17 weeks. They won the minor premiership by six points, and this was after they lost Billy Slater in the off-season and still didn’t really replace Cooper Cronk. They scored the most points in the competition and conceded the least. It was remarkable, what they did.
None of it mattered though, when Joey Leilua flicked the ball behind his back, half-blind and all, and earned Canberra a remarkable win in the first week of the finals, and none of it mattered when the Roosters ground them down into the turf at the SCG in the preliminary final on their way to winning back-to-back titles, doing the one thing that has eluded Bellamy’s Storm throughout their remarkable era.
The Storm are a winning machine unlike anything else in the modern era. Even the mighty Roosters, the most successful club of the decade, have 2016, when they totally blew up and finished second last. It was a minor blip, but even these are not tolerated or permitted in Melbourne. Apart from 2010, when they would have finished in the top four had they still been playing for points, they have never missed the finals under Craig Bellamy. They are so successful that people are sick of them, because once we grow accustomed to wonders we feel a need to tear them down.
There is no doubt in my mind that Melbourne will be successful again this year. It used to be a popular pastime, to decide that this season was the season, this is when time will catch up with Cameron Smith and Craig Bellamy’s work ethic will finally run out and losing Slater and Cronk will come back to get them and they won’t have some youngster ready to step up to the plate. This will be the year, they said, and they were always wrong.
As long as Smith and Bellamy are here, Melbourne won’t ever fall apart. You can take that to the bank.
But when you are as good as Melbourne have been, and when it’s been like that for so long, being successful and winning premierships are not the same thing, because only the latter can inform the former. The Storm, in recent years, have been a team of regular season dominance, relentless and crushing.
They bring the same intensity to a Friday night showdown against the Roosters, where pride and history are on the line, as they do to an ambling Sunday afternoon against the Titans, when the only thing that can beat them is themselves.
Therein, perhaps, lies their greatest weakness. If they are always on, always firing, always playing for perfection, there are no levels for them to rise to when the opposition demands it. Canberra, for example, were able to ascend to a higher plane during the finals last year, lifting to a level of play they could not sustain for a full season. But for a month? For a finals series? They could do that.
Or take a look at the Roosters. After the 2013 premiership, the Roosters won two more minor premierships in a row and crashed out in the preliminary finals each of the following two years.
In 2017 they came in second and the same thing happened, they were beaten by a North Queensland team that had lifted to a level beyond their normal abilities. The Roosters couldn’t follow them there, they had spent all their capital on getting there in the first place, and they paid the price.
Nobody could say the Roosters aren’t just as unrelenting as Melbourne in their pursuit of excellence. The two clubs have so much in common. But the Roosters have discovered something about premierships – the best team of the year doesn’t always win them. That’s why the Roosters were able to rest Cooper Cronk or James Tedesco here and there last year, and why they’ll do the same with Boyd Cordner this year. Most of the time they’ll still be good enough to get up, because they’re just so good, but it also helps them time their run, peaking at the right time and not for a long time.
The Storm might not need to do the same, but it’s a conversation worth having. Cameron Smith wouldn’t be saddling up for his 250th season in first grade if he was the sort who would be happy with being rested for a week or two here and there.
He wants to play 80 minutes every week, and he wants to win every single one of those minutes, and Craig Bellamy is the same and that mentality permeates everything about the Storm.
It has carried them to the type of extended excellence that is rarely seen in any sport, anywhere in the world. It’s an ornament to the game, something that should be held up and prized and celebrated. But it might not be enough, and the Storm might not be able to change.
That’s the most difficult thing for them. We know they can keep winning. They’ll keep winning after coronavirus has wiped out the human race, they’ll keep winning after climate change destroys the earth, they’ll keep winning when the universes contracts in on itself and existence as we know it comes to an end. All they have to do is what they’ve always done, and maybe that’ll be enough.
But if it’s not, and they have to change? That’s a different thing entirely, and it’s so much harder.
THE TEAM
Imagine losing Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk, not really replacing either and still being one of the competition’s powerhouses. It’s insane, really. It shouldn’t be possible, and yet it is.
Melbourne tried Brodie Croft, but when push came to shove last year they went with Ryan Papenhuyzen at the back and switched Jahrome Hughes to halfback. With Smith still at hooker and Cameron Munster still at five-eighth, the Storm have a spine situation unlike any other team in the league. Munster is the incumbent Australian five-eighth, and rightly so, but fullback might be his best position – the fact he’s been so good in the halves is a testament to his own ability, and his willingness to adapt to the needs of the team.
Likewise, Hughes is a fullback masquerading as a halfback, and even though his inexperience in that position sometimes comes through, a full off-season at the scrumbase should help him improve.
Regardless, Hughes was already capable of doing some nice things at halfback, again because he’s a quality footballer first and foremost. This unique arrangement came back to bite Melbourne in the finals last year – they do not miss Cronk and Slater every week, but they do miss them against the best defensive teams in the competition. In the preliminary final loss to the Roosters particularly, the Storm looked uncharacteristically rudderless in the attacking 20.
The forward pack is still one of the best around. It was wonderful to see Dale Finucane finally break into rep football, an overdue reward for several years of outstanding play, and the emergence of Kenny Bromwich as a ball-playing weapon on the left edge was another entertaining, if unexpected, development.
Felise Kaufusi’s attacking impact was a little blunted by the loss of Slater, but if he can build a similar combination with Hughes he’ll return to his damaging ways without worry.
Losing Will Chambers, one of Melbourne’s many fifth Beatles, does leave a hole in the centres. Justin Olam’s improvement since joining from the PNG Hunters has been impressive and he’s one to watch this time around. Not only does the Sinesine man possess the physical qualities and willingness to put his body on the line that is present in so many Kumuls players, he’s capable of some nice things with his passing game and Melbourne will look to exploit that skill as he grows more comfortable in first grade.
Craig Bellamy has blown the dust off plenty of players in his time, and nobody is as prime a candidate for the magic touch as Brenko Lee. A player of limitless attacking possibilities, Lee has never fully capitalised on the gifts he showed in his junior days with Canberra, namely because his defence varied between atrocious and non-existent.
Now he comes to Melbourne, where enigmas become stars, and we have seen this movie so many times before. Think of Marika Koroibete, Josh Addo-Carr, Suliasi Vunivalu – they chipped away at the marble until the sculpture was clear to see. It doesn’t always work, but if Lee buys in to what Bellamy sells and earns a first grade spot for Round 1 anything is possible – and by anything, I mean a Queensland Origin jersey. Seriously.
THE TIP
Melbourne will make the top four, of that you can be relatively certain. However, another premiership could be a little beyond their capabilities this year unless they can rectify whatever befell them in the finals last year. Having said that, they aren’t the type of team who beats themselves, and that is one of their best attributes.
CANBERRA RAIDERS
Just enough things have gone wrong for Canberra this off-season to have the Raiders faithful nervous.
They are a nervous breed by nature – that’s what 25 years without a grand final, and 19 years without a prelim in-between does to a fanbase. If you know a Raiders fan, one of the tragics who was seriously considering getting “up the milk” tattooed on their necks during grand final week last year, ask them about the preliminary final. Ask them about the moment, when they were up by six and the siren was sounding, when Cody Walker put in a speculator of a kick from his own 30, and the Raiders had it covered but the ball took an odd bounce and for a second it could have gone anywhere.
More than a few Raiders fans would have, in the deepest, darkest parts of their mind, imagined a terrifying scenario where, somehow, the ball was caught by a Rabbitohs player who then, somehow, ran the length of the field and scored to level things up. That didn’t happen, of course. It was never going to happen. The Raiders cleaned it up, the crowd lost their minds and they drank the territory dry that night. But that’s what we’re dealing with here. That’s what nine losses by seven points or less the previous season alone can do to a fanbase starving for success.
So, with Canberra a popular pick to regress in 2020 and return to the cusp of the eight that they occupied for so many years, there’s just enough that’s gone sideways to make you think 2019 could have been the peak of something rather than the beginning.
There was the relocation to the Sunshine Coast because of the bushfire smoke, for example. Or Curtis Scott’s court case. The scheme to get Jordan Rapana back from Japanese rugby mid-season was kiboshed by the NRL. Joey Leilua shot through, and so did Aidan Sezer. Then, late in the game, came John Bateman’s shoulder surgery.
None of these things should be crippling. Rapana was never fully fit last season and his years of maniacally driven play might have caught up with him – Bailey Simonsson is not yet in Rapana’s class, but he showed last year he’s a fine winger in his own right, and with plenty of improvement. Scott has been touted as a future Origin player since before he was in first grade, and even if he can’t have Leilua’s highs he will also not have his lows. Sezer is Canberra’s most successful halfback since Ricky Stuart, and an underrated contributor last year, but the Raiders did not rely on him like some teams rely on their halfback – Sam Williams did a fine job in the early part of the year when Sezer was injured.
Bateman’s injury is the bitterest blow – it means the Raiders will head out for the season opener against the Titans with an entirely new right side to the one that ran out on grand final night. George Williams is already under so much pressure, and having Bateman, an old Wigan and England teammate, would have made the transition easier.
Despite all this, predictions for Canberra to slip badly feel a little wide of the mark. Sometimes a team has something close to a perfect season, where everything goes their way and the pieces all fall together and they achieve above their own ability. Sometimes it ends with a grand final appearance, sometimes it even ends with a premiership, but when the season ends that magic is lost and the club, as hard as they try, can’t find it again. Think of the Broncos after 2015, or the Rabbitohs after 2014.
What makes Canberra a little different to those sides is that not everything went right for them last year. There were no major injuries, but many minor ones – they did not field their best 17 once between Round 3 and Round 22. Rookies like Hudson Young, Tom Starling and Simonsson, plus unheralded types like Michael Oldfield and Ryan Sutton, were all relied upon heavily at times. Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad was one of the finds of the year, but the Raiders only signed him a week before the first trial, and even now, after everything that happened to him last year, the Kiwi only has 33 first grade games to his name, and just one season at fullback. As good as he was, there is still so much growth in his game.
Nicoll-Klokstad is just one player with the scope to improve. Nick Cotric might have made his Origin and Test debuts in 2019, but if we’re being fair dinkum it was not his best season in first grade by some way, as minor injuries, a lengthy suspension and constant shifting between centre and wing, and left and right, hampered his progress. Jack Wighton made fools of all the doubters (and I was one of them) with his move to five-eighth, but we can expect a lift in his play as well as he further masters his new position. There are places for Canberra to go, levels to which they can still climb.
What should give the Raiders fans the most confidence is the foundation of last year’s success. Out of nowhere, and very much against type, Canberra became a defensive powerhouse in 2019. From 2012 to 2018, the Raiders won just six matches when they scored 20 points or less. In 2019 alone, they did it seven times, including in both their finals victories. The Raiders defence was not built on anticipation, like the Roosters, or on technical perfection, like Melbourne – it was born of an endless, all-consuming desire to compete and fight and win or die trying. They scrambled like mad things, and they might bend but they never break – they only conceded more than 24 points once all year.
That hunger should still be there, and it could even intensify now they have come so close to the summit only to have it taken from their grasp. Explosive, attacking football can be hard to replicate year on year, but defensive steel is harder to find and yet easier to retain. So long as Canberra fight has hard as they did in 2019, they’ll be OK. That’s not to say they’ll win the grand final, or even make it, because fighting hard isn’t always enough. But do your best to reassure the Canberra fans in your life, if you can, because even though it’s the hope that kills you in the end you have to believe in things while you still can.
THE TEAM
George Williams would have been one of the league’s most fascinating players even if he wasn’t joining the runners-up from the year before. The Wigan man has a serious history to defy given the poor run English backs have had in the NRL over the last 25 years, but he’s in as good a place as any to break the streak.
For starters, Williams is in the prime of his career at 25 – Kallum Watkins and Ryan Hall, two legends of recent times in Super League, came to the NRL on the back of serious injuries, and quite possibly with their best football behind them. Joe Burgess never stayed along to make the transition work, Chris Thorman didn’t have the same pedigree as Williams and Sam Tomkins had the misfortune of joining the Warriors, the club least likely to have such a move pay off because they are the Warriors and nothing ever seems to go the way they want.
Canberra’s record on signing English players is well-known, and their greatest success, like Williams, was a spine player. Josh Hodgson was not one of the best hookers in the world when he joined the club – although he had made his England debut – but he was able to rise with the tide and now he’s one of the best players in the game. Williams is a different style of player to the departing Sezer – he’s more of a runner than an organiser, and translating that is the key to his success – but he is in the best position to succeed of any European back since Brian Carney. The learning curve may be steep, but Williams will be an absorbing test case in the differences between the two leagues, and he’s somebody every fan should keep an eye on.
The Raiders really need Williams to work out the way they want. They had some issues last year scoring points against the best defensive teams in the competition – of course, most teams did, that’s why they were the best defensive teams in the competition. But Canberra relied on individuals making plays rather than structural attacking movements.
Think a John Bateman offload, or a Joey Leilua flick pass, or Josh Papalii beating someone up the middle. This has it’s advantages – if Canberra aren’t playing to structure, the other team cannot anticipate it – but it’s nice to have things to fall back on. That, the club hopes, is what Williams can provide.
Bateman’s injury creates an interesting wrinkle on the right edge. Corey Horsburgh was a surprise choice to fill in for the Englishman in the club’s only trial against the Bulldogs, especially given Joseph Tapine’s form at second row in the past. Tapine is in a tough spot – he is a better edge than middle, but he can’t play there regularly because of Bateman and Elliott Whitehead, and the Kiwi has his moments at lock but is better suited wider out. Given Scott’s arrival and Williams’ inexperience in the NRL, having Tapine there rather than Horsburgh, an impressive player to be sure but one bound for the middle third of the field, could be the way to go.
THE TIP
The Raiders are good enough for the top eight even if Williams doesn’t set the world on fire. Precisely how high they finish, and what September may hold, depends much on his performance.
SYDNEY ROOSTERS
Never again will we be subject to the same old story in the days following the grand final.
You know the one – some half-cut player from the winning team who hasn’t slept in three days and rightfully so gets a microphone put in their face as they say the same thing as they fellas the year before and the year before that.
“We don’t just want this to be a one off, we want to create a dynasty and do it again next year.”
Somewhere in the story the same line gets printed, that no team had gone back to back in a united competition since the 1992-93 Broncos.
But it’s over! We’re free! The boozy promises the Roosters made after the 2018 grand final win came true. They did. They climbed the mountain, then climbed it again. In a league that fetishises and weaponized parity, that’s a remarkable thing.
The Roosters are the premiere club of the last decade, and their current iteration is one of the finest teams of the last 30 years. Nobody else has gone back to back, as you well know. Even the ludicrously overpowered Storm teams, who were quite literally too good to be true, had to settle for four straight grand finals and a mere two premierships, the poor dears.
So the Tricolours are already out in front. It’s house money, all of it. They could stumble out of the casino, order a limo home and through their chips into the pool and swim around in them like they’re Scrooge McDuck.
Or they could keep doing it. They really could. And if they do, there’s something even greater than a premiership at play, the Roosters would be chasing history – the kind that lasts forever and stays around long after they’ve all hung up the boots.
The last team to win three titles in a row was Parramatta from 1981 to 1983. Before that it was the Dragons who won every year from 1956 to 1966, a feat so stupendous it bends reality. Souths won three in a row before that, from 1953 to 1955. Eastern Suburbs did it as well, from 1935 to 1937. The Rabbitohs won five in a row from 1925 to 1929, Balmain did it from 1915 to 1917 and Easts did it first, from 1911 to 1913.
In 112 years of Australian rugby league, it’s only happened seven times. Six of those times came when television was still black and white, and five of those six times were so long ago it’s the kind of thing trainspotters know and normal fans forget.
Winning three in a row, in the professional era, with the salary cap specifically designed to tear teams down as quickly as they can build themselves up, would propel this current group of Roosters into the sort of rarefied air most teams can barely imagine. If they do this, if they win three straight, they’re in the conversation with the greatest teams of all time. There will be no other choice. They’ll have beaten the system, and bent the league to their will in a way no other team has in the last 40 years.
It’s difficult to know how much these things impact the mind of the modern footballer. It’s so big picture, so expansive and wild and hard to get your head around that it’s almost too much. How can you focus on this week’s away trip to Townsville if you’re thinking about how you match up with Dally Messenger and Reg Gasnier? Premierships are won in the details, and too much looking at the history books before they’re written is an easy way to ensure they’re not written in the first place.
Focusing on those details and, to use a very well-worn phrase, taking it one week at a time, is part of why the Roosters were able to win their second title. Winning a premiership is a big thing. It takes months to execute and years of planning before that. It’s as big a job as there is in rugby league. But winning this ruck? Winning this minute? Winning this half? Winning this game? That’s much easier.
That’s why players say things like ‘we’re only focused on this week’s match” or “we’re not thinking about the finals just yet” because they can’t get carried away. But when the stakes are footballing immortality, and they chance to exist on the same plane as the best teams who ever did it, and the opportunity to be able to say that my team, in my time, might have been the best ever? God, how could anybody resist it? How could you not get caught up in that, if only for a while?
It won’t come easy, of course. Nothing great ever does. It’ll be the hardest thing these Roosters ever do, and they have already done so much. Losing Cooper Cronk is a hammer blow, and Kyle Flanagan is promising but untested. Latrell Mitchell created the try that won the grand final last year, and he’s gone as well. And after two years of ultimate success, and all that it breeds, it would be borderline unnatural for the Roosters to keep the same standards of excellence. As good as they were last year, the Raiders fought them all the way and on another day they could have beaten them. It doesn’t matter if you win a race by an inch or a mile, but winning by an inch is harder while it’s happening.
The Roosters aren’t just competing against 15 other teams who are desperate to tear them down, rub them in the dirt a bit and prove they’re not so goddamn great after all. They’re carrying an impossible weight of history, the kind that no other team in the league can really understand, and the cost of failure will be low because of their credit but the rewards of success will be more than they can imagine. It’s so much to bear. It’s such a hard thing to do. I’m not writing them off.
THE TEAM
James Tedesco is the Roosters best player and has been since he joined the club, but Cooper Cronk was arguably their most important and the void he leaves is immeasurable. When I think of the impact Cronk brought the Roosters I always come back to the 2018 finals win over the Sharks. Cronulla were a good side that year, battle-hardened and ferocious, and they gave the Roosters all they could handle in their week one clash at the SFS.
With nine minutes to go, and the Roosters leading by six, Chad Townsend put a kick through and Luke Lewis fumbled it as he was trying to regather and score. It was as close a shave as a team can have, and from the moment play restarted from the 20, Cronk stood behind the play the ball, yelling and directing and occasionally literally dragging players where he needed them to be.
On the final play of the ensuing set, Cronk took a shot at field goal from 25 metres out, right in front, after receiving the ball just how he likes it. It pushed the lead to seven, the Roosters won 21-12, and they won because Cronk kept his head when things got hot, as he always, always, always did. Cronk was a creature born through relentless practice, and he found perfection in that practice and nobody, not even Johnathan Thurston, could run a team round the park like Cronk.
That was the difference between Cronk and Mitchell Pearce, who couldn’t get the Roosters over the hump again after 2013. That’s the difference between Cronk and everybody else of his time - he is grace under pressure, every single time.
That’s a huge thing to replace, especially when it’s an untried Kyle Flanagan stepping into the boots of a man who made the grand final nine times in 14 years as a starting halfback. The Storm could get away with it, because they had Cameron Smith and Billy Slater to cover for Cronk. The Roosters have Tedesco and all the rest, but asking the more frantic Luke Keary to be like Cronk is a tall order. All the other pieces are still here – the Roosters forwards are still nasty, Jake Friend is still very good, Keary is a weapon all his own and Tedesco is Tedesco – but there’s no replicating what Cronk could do, not really. It can be imitated but not replicated.
THE TIP
The Roosters certainly can win the premiership, and I have them making the top four, but the odds are stacked against them. At some point, everything they’ve done has to catch up with them, and it would be so easy for them to drop even a slight step given everything they’ve done. They won’t be the superpower of last year, but they will be in with every chance and with Robinson calling the shots that might be all they need.
Originally published as NRL 2020: Campo’s Corner previews the Roosters, Raiders, Rabbitohs and Melbourne Storm