Best Latrell has been in body and mind

Just throw Latrell Mitchell the ball and everything is right with the world.

Latrell Mitchell runs the ball at Souths training. Picture: Getty Images.

Just throw Latrell Mitchell the ball and everything is right with the world.

Immediately he’s back in the backyard, playing footy with his brothers and uncles, or with all the kids – boys and girls – on the grass out the front of the bush pub.

“Latrell can be having a tough day at training and not enjoying the grind, the regimentation,” his former coach Wayne Bennett said. “You throw him the ball and he becomes another person. Running and beating guys. Laughing. I’ve seen him on the field when everyone’s exhausted and he gets the ball and takes off, runs 40 ­metres in a flash or sets someone up for a try.”

At 26, and after an up-and-down beginning shadowed by homesickness and personal uncertainties, Mitchell is now a ­superstar of the National Rugby League, the best he’s ever been.

He won back-to-back premierships with the Roosters in 2018-19 and was a member of Bennett’s 2021 South Sydney team that lost the grand final without a suspended Mitchell.

Last year he helped inspire coach Mal Meninga’s Australian team to win the World Cup in ­England after being unsure about leaving home for the tour.

When the Panthers knocked his Rabbitohs out in the preliminary final, Mitchell found solace on the NSW south coast playing in the Koori Knockout, while at the same time being picked for Australia. He then turned up at the team hotel in Sydney looking confused.

On arrival in Manchester, ­England, he hung out a bit with Josh Addo-Carr and Jack Wighton but kept mainly to himself and team management privately worried about his motivation.

Until they got him out on the field. They threw him the ball, and magic.

During that first ball session Mitchell confided he had to feel “connected to the Earth” and within a week he was leading the team talks and laughter.

Meninga has a gift of empowering his players and making them believe they deserve to be there. Not everyone can feel comfortable stepping up to be the next Meninga or Wally Lewis or ­Arthur Beetson.

Meninga taught Mitchell it wasn’t about him. It was about pride in the jersey, his mates and his family. He made Mitchell take off the mask and watched him develop into the best player on tour.

“He’s just got this aura when he walks into a room,” said Meninga, the former champion ­centre-three-quarter who knows these things. “What I’ve found in the past half decade is he has a real passion about his aboriginality and he wants to become a spokesman and role model for what you’d call his people.

“That’s an important edge to him. He’s become a really strong leader. The way he speaks, it comes from the heart. What we know about Latrell (is) when he feels that he belongs he’ll give his all for you. For that cause or for that club.

“For South Sydney or for his family he’s all-in. He’s gotta be all in or all out … that’s how he looks at life, I reckon.”

Back to Bennett: he has won a record seven premierships and coached first grade at the Raiders, Broncos, Dragons, Knights, Broncos again, Rabbitohs and now Dolphins.

We have known each other a long time, co-authored a couple of books together and, except for maybe Allan Langer, I have never seen him care more for a player than he does Mitchell.

When they were together at Souths they’d drive up to Mitchell’s home town of Taree on the NSW mid-north coast and shoot the breeze with the locals.

Latrell Mitchell saw Greg Inglis plays and remembers wanting to be him. Picture: Grant Trouville/NRL Images.

“Latrell loves Taree, it’s his sanctuary,” Bennett said. “For a lot of boys coming up it’s hard ­living away from home but for an aboriginal boy it’s harder.

“So at first Latrell lived with his uncle on the central coast and went to train in the city on a train. He’d go to school through the day and jump on a train to the Roosters. Head off down there. He found staying with his uncle on the coast and jumping on the train meant he didn’t have to live in Sydney. He had people he could come home to and, you know, feel comfortable with.”

It’s a large Indigenous community in Taree and all the kids would wave madly at Latrell and Bennett as their big ute rolled around town, ultimately parking at the local pub for lunch.

There the boys and girls, 20 or 30 of them, would come running up with a ball and begin playing touch footy on the grass out the front.

“That was me,” said Mitchell, pointing. As a boy he saw the great Greg Inglis and remembers wanting to be him.

This day he disappears and comes back 20 minutes later, saying to Bennett: “C’mon, we’re going to join the kids. I just bought them all some lunch, drinks and everything, and they’re going to bring it out the front and we’re going to sit with them.”

Mitchell knew some of them by name, not all of them, but they most definitely knew him. Bennett remembers it was a hot day and they sat there for a long time.

“I’ve met a lot of people in my life but I haven’t seen too many people do that,” he said. “The generosity.” But even then they had to ask for their ball back.

Rabbitohs hooker Damien Cook believes Redfern in South Sydney, like Taree, has become a happy place for his star teammate. “I’ve seen the turnaround,” he said.

Mitchell spent 11 weeks out injured before returning in last weekend’s big win over Wests Tigers at Tamworth, where he had more runs than he’d ever had in a match.

You should have seen the locals going off when he ran along the fence at fulltime, high-fiving and receiving bigger cheers than Shania Twain at the Country Music Festival.

Cook and Mitchell will be together again tonight taking on the Cronulla Sharks, the sides placed sixth and seventh respectively on the ladder with just five rounds until the finals. It is a big match.

“Yeah, and soon as Trell gets out there he’ll want the ball all the time,” said Cook, who instigates the Rabbitohs’ attacking plays passing from dummy-half. “He’ll want to be part of everything. He’ll be out to win the game from every part of the field, every minute, every play.”