NRL in Vegas: Roosters coach Trent Robinson takes blame for mixed 2023 season ahead of Broncos clash
After an underwhelming 2023 season that saw the Roosters limp into finals, Trent Robinson has bravely admited his team weren’t up to standard and that he needs to be better.
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After an underwhelming 2023 season, Sydney Roosters coach Trent Robinson has bravely admitted: “I need to be better as a coach.”
“For our standards, we haven’t been good enough,” he said.
Robinson’s American dream is about to start.
In a brutally honest assessment of himself, Robinson said he took time to self-reflect after his side limped into last year’s finals before being eliminated in week two.
The Roosters won a competition just four years ago but Robinson said he needed to be “the best coach possible and win competitions.”
He then added: “And I haven’t been doing that lately.”
Robinson was talking from his club’s Los Angeles base ahead of Sunday’s historic game against Brisbane in Las Vegas.
“You’ve got to be self-reflective enough that you can call yourself out. I want to be my best, I want to keep pushing myself and keep learning,” he said. “It starts with me – I need to get better as a coach and ask what can I do?
“(A lot) depends on your motivation and my motivation is to be the best coach possible and win competitions and I haven’t been doing that lately so it took a couple of questions to ask why and to try and find a solution.
“On-field, we have to get back up there. I haven’t been happy with how we’ve been playing so that took a fair bit of reflection at the end of the year.
“I feel like I’ve had a good start (to my career) but I’m hungry for more. Getting the best out of yourself is a simple pursuit that any man should go after. We’re not meant to be perfect.
“I feel that people look at us (coaches) and think: ‘This is the way they are as a coach and they’re like that the whole time’. We go through our peaks and troughs and you try to minimise the troughs.
“I’m in the middle of trying to win more competitions, creating a club that is competing every year for premierships and producing great men and women. What more could you ask for as a coach?”
The Roosters will field another powerhouse squad this year with expectations being high, as they are annually.
And Robinson spoke of the irony around his new career kickstart being in, of all places, Las Vegas.
“We feel like we have done the work but the proof will be in the pudding. I need to prove that and the players do as a team. We have to put it on the pitch, starting on Saturday,” he said.
“I crave the games to get that feedback and I can’t wait for it to start and what better place to do it than Las Vegas, and on a pretty big stage for rugby league.
“It’s about us proving that we have improved our game towards the style that is needed in 2024.
“You want to be as good as you can be in whatever field you’re working in. If I can do that in my profession as a coach then it will show publicly.”
Roosters players have enjoyed LA, visiting Venice Beach, Beverly Hills, Downtown LA and watching Lakers and Clippers NBA matches.
But, on Monday, there was a sharp cut through at training inside UCLA with intensity levels increasing considerably.
“The point of us coming over here was to export the Roosters and we want to enjoy that, we want to offer that to our players,” Robinson said. “To do that in Las Vegas, and the US, is a privilege.
“You’ve got to enjoy different surroundings but also we’re here for one thing and that’s to represent the Roosters and Monday (in LA) is the day when you lock in and get ready to play.
“We’ve had a good pre-season, like everybody else, and now it’s time to play.”
‘WE NEED SHOWMANSHIP’: WHY NEXT-GEN NRL STARS WILL CHANGE GAME
Sydney Roosters five-eighth Luke Keary says the next generation of NRL stars, raised on Tiktok, YouTube and American sport, are ready to forever change the on-field behaviour of rugby league players.
Keary has predicted the showboating theatre of American sport will soon be widespread in the NRL, a sport where fans have traditionally gravitated towards players who opt for humility instead of overzealous celebrations.
However, the likes of Brisbane duo Ezra Mam and Reece Walsh, Penrith’s ‘chief energy officer’ Jarome Luai and North Queensland fullback Scott Drinkwater are driving a new culture, and Keary is all for it.
American sport is world-renowned for its athletes being trash-talking, loud and brash, traits once viewed as arrogant in Australia.
The influence of NFL and NBA players is slowly but surely growing in rugby league.
“If someone is loud, obnoxious and puts themselves out there back home, we just shove them back in their box,” Keary said from the Roosters’ base in Los Angeles.
“Whereas here in America, those players slowly lift them (teammates and fans) up. The louder and more obnoxious, the more outrageous they are, the more they love them here and it’s pretty cool to watch. We would never do that.
“If you don’t like them, you want them to fail and if you love them, you want to see them rise up. We need showmanship.
“The athleticism and showmanship, the way they do it over here, can be attractive to us and is so different for us.
“But I reckon this new generation, because they have had so much access through social media, like Ezra Mam and Jarome Luai, they are a bit more out there.
“They are still going to cop it (if they showboat) but they’ve got to get through that. I reckon we will get a few more doing it.
“We’ve even got the young fellas now doing videos on Tiktok and YouTube. It’s good for our game, it builds the profile of an individual player.
“Honestly, it’s entertaining. Even those polarising characters, you tune in to watch them. Right?”
Previous generations of NRL players had rugby league stars as role models. Now, more and more, their sporting heroes are hailing from America.
“Rugby league kids have their rugby league (heroes) but they also have their American heroes. Basketballers, the rappers, NFL players,” Keary said.
“We all watch it from afar and it’s really cool. Even at basketball the other night (watching the LA Clippers), why can’t we have entertainment – Two-and-a-half hours of entertainment?”
Asked how he would celebrate by scoring a try in Vegas, Keary joked: “I might do a dance.”
Keary, 32, signed a one-year extension at the Roosters on Monday which concludes after 2025.
“As I got to the end of last year, I had a really healthy season, and haven’t had any serious head knocks in the last couple of years, I felt physically and mentally good,” he said.
“I felt I had a heap more to give but I first wanted to check with my wife and then the club. I wasn’t in a rush.
“We waited through the pre-season and it has all worked out. The club was happy to have me on for another year and I was happy to go one more.”
Mitchell’s Vegas battle cry: ‘Call it Trellegiant Stadium’
-David Riccio
Latrell Mitchell has a sparkle in his eye, which is just perfect for his arrival into the city of diamonds and aces.
In the wake of what his coaches say is his best pre-season in five years, the South Sydney star is fit, happy and at his cheeky best.
In San Diego training with the Rabbitohs, Mitchell quipped that Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas should be renamed ahead of his side’s clash with Manly next weekend.
“I just hope they roll out the words ”Trell” in front of Allegiant, to make it Trellegiant,” Mitchell smiled.
“Trellianz (Allianz Stadium in Sydney) will be there when I get back.”
The champion fullback didn’t stop there, declaring the NRL’s odyssey to the US would prove to Americans that rugby league was a better spectacle than the NFL.
“I think it’s a great eye opener for the world, we get to display our skills and our combat,” Mitchell said.
“We don’t wear pads. I’m not bagging the NFL, they’re superstars with their athleticism, but this is the greatest game of all.
“To bring it to fresh eyes, it will be something special.
“I think if they come, have a beer, tailgate party and just experience what Australian culture is about and that is, to play the number one sport rugby league, including the AFL.”
Mitchell’s vocal passion for the big stage was matched only by his emotion following a moving Native American greeting by the Kumeyaay people to the entire Rabbitohs squad after training on Friday.
Mitchell presented a didgeridoo as part of the ceremony to the elders with the Rabbitohs all receiving a traditional native American necklace.
“I can only say a big thank you for the welcoming. It means everything spiritually,’’ Mitchell said.
“Thank you to the Kumeyaay people, it made me think of home.
“I was sitting there closing my eyes, I could just feel it. It’s something you can’t explain. There’s a lot of emotion and pride going through me.
“It fills my cup up.’’
Mitchell also spoke of how had mentally moved on from the Rabbitohs failed season in 2023.
“That’s how a lot of people should be,’’ Mitchell said.
“You got to move on, otherwise you dwell on stuff that happens in the media and what not. It just consumes you.
“Your outlet doesn’t seem to work. Your values don’t seem to work. You don’t know if you’re living any more.
“For me it was about going back to my roots, knowing what I’ve got at home and going from there.’’
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Originally published as NRL in Vegas: Roosters coach Trent Robinson takes blame for mixed 2023 season ahead of Broncos clash
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