By Dan Walsh
It’s proof the rugby league gods have a sense of theatre. Of the 16 rival clubs Latrell Mitchell could be playing his first game in nine months against, it has to be the Roosters.
The biggest moments around Mitchell - the biggest headline and biggest personality in the game - so often are.
His move across Anzac Parade and the months of spiteful sniping that followed.
The brutal head-high shot on former teammate Joey Manu that ended both their seasons, with the fall-out rippling far and wide - not least into a three-year-long feud between Nick Politis and Phil Gould, two of rugby league’s most powerful figures.
The booing saga of late-2022 and the last laugh Mitchell enjoyed in South Sydney’s infamous “Sin-bin Sunday” semi-final, when no less than seven players were sat down but the Rabbitohs star held his cool.
And come Friday night, the game’s oldest, most storied rivalry hosts one of the bigger games of Mitchell’s career.
Latrell Mitchell is ready to return for South Sydney.Credit: Getty Images
Mitchell is finally back, looking fitter than ever and most significantly, with Wayne Bennett in his corner and the South Sydney coach’s box.
“I need ya,” Mitchell told Bennett down the line when his return to the Rabbitohs was sealed mid-last year.
“Yes,” Bennett deadpanned. “Yes, you do.”
That conversation came before Mitchell’s already tumultuous 2024 campaign unravelled entirely, thanks to a photograph of him standing over a white substance in a Dubbo hotel room emerged last August.
A one-game suspension and $20,000 fine from the NRL have been served and paid, along with another $100,000 penalty from South Sydney (all but $20,000 suspended) and last rites at the club issued.
Mitchell has turned heads all summer long at Maroubra with his impressive physique and talk he’s dropped as much as 10 kilos, only to have his NRL return delayed by a six-week hamstring injury.
In concert with Cameron Murray’s ruptured Achilles, the injuries threatened to end Souths’ top-eight hopes before a ball was kicked. Mitchell’s influence on the Rabbitohs’ win-loss record is up there with Tom Trbojevic and Manly, Mitchell Moses and Parramatta.
But the Rabbitohs have held their gloves up without Mitchell and pinched an upset win from Penrith along with victories over the Dragons and Dolphins - the kind of line ball games that decide the top eight.
Latrell Mitchell’s long-awaited return is almost upon us.Credit: Michael Pantaleone
What the Roosters would give to say the same about a tense away loss to the Warriors, and last Friday’s capitulation to the Titans.
The foundation clubs come together from opposite ends of the ladder on Friday night, with injured hooker Brandon Smith the latest to do the time-honoured dance between the two clubs in 2026, if not earlier.
Right in the middle of this week’s build-up, and then Accor Stadium, will be Mitchell.
Bennett has been insistent that Souths’ $1 million talisman “only needs to do his job and be in sync with the rest of us”, and has already dismissed suggestions he could shift to centre so Jye Gray can stay at fullback.
Roosters centre Rob Toia in action against Penrith.Credit: Getty Images
The lethal left-edge combination Mitchell enjoys with Cody Walker and Jack Wighton looms.
Opposite that daunting prospect will be 20-year-old Roosters centre Rob Toia, who like so many idolised Mitchell as a teenage centre and lifelong Tricolours fan.
Toia has an appreciation of the game’s most enduring rivalry, any real-life Roosters loss during his childhood was followed by a PlayStation square-up - making sure the Rabbitohs were beaten “by 100 on Rugby League Live”.
The softly spoken Queenslander has an appreciation of Mitchell the man too, from when he called Moore Park home.
“I met him when the club brought me down in under 15s, he was one of the only players I met, he talked to me and my family,” Toia recalled on Sunday.
“I remember him just saying ‘I was a young fella in your position as well, and I moved away from home’. And he just told me to stick at it and maybe he would see me one day.”
Yet another tantalising Roosters-Rabbitohs clash is not a bad day for it. Especially given the rugby league gods penchant for theatre, with Mitchell right in the middle of it.
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