Roosters coach Trent Robinson on why the Anzac Day game with St George Illawarra means so much
COMMEMORATIVE games are tough to do well. But the Roosters and Dragons work hard to get it right each year, with their pledge to honour the day, and the sacrifice, with their performance, writes PAUL KENT.
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THE Sydney Roosters have got the tone right ahead of Wednesday afternoon’s Anzac Day game.
Commemorative games are tough to do well.
In the early years too much emphasis was put on the war analogy. It was respectful but misguided, and a little overdone.
Comparisons between mateship and sacrifice stood up a little hollow when the difference was bullets whizzing or concentrating on your edge defence.
Inevitably there came the pushback and the clubs respectfully adjusted.
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The Roosters work hard to get it right each year, as do their opponents, St George Illawarra.
They make the game bigger with their pledge nowadays.
The Roosters look to honour the day, and the sacrifice, with their performance.
There is no indication they are trying to replicate or compare themselves to what the soldiers do.
Roosters coach Trent Robinson said the game occupies the mind the moment the previous game is finished.
“This week, as soon as you finish the Dogs game, I thought straight away about Anzac Day,” he said on NRL360 Monday night.
“We are so lucky at the Roosters and the Dragons to play on Anzac Day. It’s the best day of footy.
“But it’s hard for us to express that. And because I coach rugby league I get the opportunity to coach rugby league on that day to honour the Anzacs.
“It’s our best day of the year. For me ...
“So I feel really proud and honoured and we do as the Roosters and we talk about that. So we spend some time talking about that.”
The game is also important to the Anzac legacy, though. Each generation is schooled on the Anzac legend and the wars our soldiers fought.
The first heroes of the very young, though, are almost always sportsmen.
And often their first introduction that the Anzacs are something bigger than they might have thought, something even more heroic, is witnessed in the players’ reverence today.
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For that, the Anzac game should remain forever.
There is a difference in the air at the Anzac game.
It crackles through the crowd. It is a restrained electricity that sets the tone for the entire round.
Rather than a cheap attempt to emulate the Anzac deeds the Roosters and Dragons, and later tonight Melbourne and the Warriors, tap into its essence.
It is all the difference.
It begins the moment last round is over.
“We had the Australian Defence Force team come and watch the team training on Saturday and then train with the guys afterwards,” Robinson said.
“We’ll have someone come in and talk abut what Anzac Day means to them and then we will go and spend a camp together. We will go and eat together and spend the night together as Roosters and then we’ll wake up and then go for a walk and then we get ready for Anzac Day.
“But the beauty of Anzac Day, as well, is that in the end we play rugby league. We’ve got to go out there, and that’s out way of honouring it.
“There’s all the metaphors around it but, in the end, with all that stuff around it, we’ve got to make sure we play our best football.
“That’s why I love this week so much.
“The honour of it, but then also we’ve the purity of going and playing rugby league and trying to get the best our of ourselves.”
The purity of playing is not often heard around the NRL.
Too often we get lost in the political backrooms, high stakes coaching, the petty jealousies and small atrocities, that feeling that everything good is the best we have ever seen and all that is bad is in crisis.
Then there are moments like today.
Moments when everybody has a chance to stand taller and act a little nobler, standing in the reflected glory of something that really matters.