Paul Kent: Sydney Roosters must match club’s deeds of the 70s to reach their goal
The Sydney Roosters play the Storm knowing victory can put them on the verge of back-to-back premierships. And they can look at their own history for how to do it.
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A touch of poetry welcomes the Sydney Roosters onto the SCG on Saturday night.
What better place for history to begin, you realise, than on the same dirt where Beetson and Coote and their Roosters went back to back in 1974-75. If recent history is to be broken, what better place to start than where it is made?
The Roosters are aware more than a grand final appearance awaits when they play Melbourne at the SCG. They know the reckless care that will run rampant next week as talk of back-to-back champions gets thrown about, a solid storyline in what is a long week for the newsmakers.
No team in the NRL era has won back to back premierships. Not unless you count the very first NRL title in 1998 when Wayne Bennett’s Broncos beat Canterbury 38-12.
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The premiership was the Broncos’ second in a row after they won a premiership a year earlier. But that was Super League and no ARL clubs participated. Newcastle won the ARL premiership, giving the game two champions.
Since then a few teams have had a chance.
Trent Robinson knows the weight of it.
The Roosters won so well last season they were favourites this season even though history said it was wasted money.
The job has proven too big for every team in the NRL era. The salary cap and levelling of competition through continual player movement has shown premierships belong to momentum, not dynasties.
That was the job for Robinson when the Roosters got back for off-season training. How do you climb the mountain twice?
In other years the talk has often been the same. If we can do it once why can’t we do it again? That’s if teams chose to talk about it at all, which most did not. Like the grand final superstition of refusing to touch the premiership trophy in grand final week, talking of repeating seemed to carry the same curse.
Here, Robinson adjusted.
At least within the team it was impossible not to address it. What were they playing for if not to win the premiership?
History said they could not do it, so how to find a way …?
Their opponents tonight, Melbourne, have dominated the NRL for the past decade and several times have gone close to back to back premierships.
The Storm made four grand finals in a row from 2006-09 going loss-win-loss-win, an accomplishment that should be completely disregarded now because we know the Storm were cheating the salary cap.
The Storm, with no conscience, still display the replica trophies they cheated to win in 2007 and 2009 in their foyers, as if they really did win those games fairly.
Amid Melbourne’s streak Manly had their own shot at taking back to back titles. The Sea Eagles went down to the cheating Storm in 2007 and beat them in 2008, 40-0, when Cameron Smith was suspended for the grand final.
The Storm have done it again, though.
They went down to Cronulla in 2016, beat North Queensland in 2017 and then lost to the Roosters last year.
A win on Saturday night qualifies them for their fourth straight grand final, a mighty achievement.
Outside that the only team to reach the grand final a year after winning was the Roosters in 2003. They went down to Penrith, possibly playing their grand final the week before against the other premiership heavyweight at the time, Canterbury.
Repeating as champions is the dividing line that separates the good teams from greatness.
It must remain the last frustration for the Storm, who have been so good for so long.
The previous repeat champions before the Broncos in 1997-98 were, again, the Broncos, who won premierships in 1992-93, beating St George each time, and before that it was Canberra in 1989-90 and Canterbury in 1984-85.
It seemed to happen a lot once upon a time but the salary cap has stopped it, or at least slowed it.
Now, teams need to have more than the most talent in the competition.
When the Roosters reassembled for this season they put it to bed, early, all this talk about repeat champions.
Of course they were going for it.
Once that was acknowledged internally, and agreed not to be spoken about publicly, almost immediately they began working backwards, understanding that the work in winning the premiership was a daily exercise.
That is where it gets most teams. The stumble.
Most climb the mountain and grow impatient to do it again. There is all this talk about rival teams getting up to play them, sure, that no game is an easy game, and the weekly attrition of it all begins to wear them down.
But the true threat is looking ahead, impatience at the process when you are all too aware of the elation that possibly awaits.
How do you stay motivated through the drudgery of mid-season games that offer nothing like the end of season highs experienced the year before?
The key was to find the challenge.
In many ways this was no different to what Robinson was already doing at the club.
Since he got there he has worked with a sure hand to turn the Roosters into true premiership heavyweights.
There is no doubt a swagger about this team, and what waits for the Roosters is a level beyond merely premiers.
The last Roosters team that went back to back, Eastern Suburbs in 1974-75, boasted some of the greatest names the game ever saw. Arthur Beetson is an Immortal, Ron Coote should be.
Alongside them were the likes of Russell Fairfax, John Peard, Bunny Reilly, Elwyn Walters, John Brass, Mark Harris and Ian Schubert, names that echo wherever rugby league is played.
Against that these modern day Roosters stack up pretty well, though.
Indeed, they strip the 70s era for Tests and state matches, although there are many more representative games played now than then.
But many of this mob are only halfway into their careers. And they might repeat in an era that is, altogether, with salary caps and levelled rosters, much harder.
They might even be greater than the 74-75 version.
To justify that conversation, though, they have to go back to back.
Will Boyd see out Broncos contract?
Few teams, while not playing, have dominated the news cycle like the Brisbane Broncos.
It shows the size of the club and the speed of their decline.
The early news that Matt Lodge was being mentioned as a definite skipper has been tempered with the Broncos now withdrawing from that position, having tasted the public reaction.
Some ex-players have privately spoken about returning their life memberships if Lodge is made captain.
Pat Carrigan is being mentioned as a potential co-captain despite the fact he is almost anonymous to even the Broncos fans.
The debate over the next captain underlines the confusion within the club.
Darius Boyd’s position in the team has been questioned for much of the season and a large reason often given for Boyd’s inclusion were his leadership qualities. It was indisputable.
But now Boyd has been stripped of the captaincy, told he will play centre, and the club is canvassing one of its most unpopular players as his potential replacement.
Boyd has two more seasons at the club but must play 15 games next season to activate the clause in his next deal.
Given the manoeuvrings at the club, you wouldn’t be holding your breath.
- Paul Kent