Cooper Cronkâs desire for repeated excellence guides Roosters to brink of more success
A BELIEF in courage and commitment to success has resulted in a winning fit for the Roosters and their near flawless star acquisition.
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COOPER Cronk touches the ball on average between 45 and 50 times a game.
Sometimes it’s more, rarely less.
I sat there crunching the numbers ahead of the Sydney Roosters preliminary final against South Sydney.
In his 15 NRL seasons, Cronk has played 347 premiership matches, 22 State of Origins and 38 Tests for Australia.
All up, that means Cronk has handled the football more than 18,000 times during his career.
And the question I ask today is this: Can you remember the last time Cronk took the wrong option with the ball in his hands?
Do you remember him ever coming up with a clanger, kind of like the Ben Hunt moment from last week?
Or even James Maloney’s effort in Penrith’s loss to Cronulla.
I can’t.
Sure, Maloney is cut from a different cloth and with his mistakes comes moments of pure magic.
But Cronk also has his share of memorable moments, yet is still pretty much always flawless.
And yet all the commentary this week is about this being Cronk and the Sydney Roosters’ boom or bust moment.
And only the result will determine if it was the right call to bring in Cronk over the top of Mitchell Pearce?
While I’m not a Roosters fan, regardless of what happens, I admire the courage and commitment to success Cronk and the Roosters have shown. Because they could quite easily have stuck with Pearce after last year’s preliminary final and crossed their fingers hoping it would work out in 2018.
And even though the club didn’t want Pearce to go, the Roosters wanted to be better.
So they made changes they deemed necessary.
They brought in James Tedesco to replace Michael Gordon, who was a good footy player but no Tedesco.
And when Cronk came on the market, they decided to challenge themselves like few other NRL clubs would.
And this was never about having, or getting, the most money.
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When Cronk decided to leave Melbourne, he could have taken his pick of just about any Sydney club and got the same money, if not more.
Up in Newcastle, they had pots of cash but Cronk still chose the Roosters.
He obviously saw them as his best chance to win another comp.
He ignored the pressure that went with the challenge.
For both parties, this was about taking excuses out of the equation.
In the early 1990s, Sports Illustrated had a story about the boxer, Michael Moorer, written in the aftermath of Moorer’s victory over Evander Holyfield.
Moorer was a talented fighter with all the weapons.
But his one perceived weakness was in his mind.
Moorer was known as a man who would do almost anything to get out of the way of hard work.
So before his heavyweight title fight against Holyfield, Moorer went searching for a trainer who could push him past his previous limits.
And he hired Teddy Atlas.
What’s this got to do with Cronk and the Roosters?
Well, Atlas had trained plenty of champions, including a young Mike Tyson, but it was his reputation for not surrendering to excuses that was legendary.
So one day when Moorer attempted to play his old trick and call in sick, Atlas turned on him.
The story goes they stood toe-to-toe and as Moorer tried to push past the littler man, Atlas refused to budge.
Ultimately, Moorer ended up training that day, and every day after, until he went out against Holyfield and fought the fight of his life.
Atlas explained that it was not laziness that held Moorer back previously, but “fear and pressure”.
The point being if he lost, Moorer could always find an excuse to reason with his conscience.
But by confronting that fear with hard work and preparation, Moorer found the confidence to deal with the pressure.
Which in many ways, is the secret to Cronk’s sustained success.
Andrew Johns spoke about it before this season even kicked off.
As the Roosters coaching consultant, rugby league’s eighth Immortal was immediately blown away by Cronk’s attention to detail.
“We all know what a wonderful player he is,” Johns told me in January. “But the one thing that comes out when he is talking to the players around him, one word I just keep hearing is repetition.”
Whether Cronk was talking to his backrowers, hooker Jake Friend or Tedesco, Johns said it was all about repetition, planning.
“And that is what he has built his game on,” Johns said.
There was plenty of criticism of the Roosters’ early season performances yet slowly but surely, it came together and they ended up claiming another minor premiership.
Now they go into another prelim final. Once again, all the pressure is on the Roosters as Souths coach Anthony Seibold has already pointed out. But this time Cronk is in charge, not Pearce. We saw what he delivered in week one of the finals when Cronk’s field goal iced the win over Cronulla.
And while many might still argue Cronk needs to take the Roosters into the grand final to ensure this season is judged a success, I ask one final question: Do you reckon Roosters fans would be feeling more confident if anyone other than Cronk was wearing their No 7 jumper this weekend?