NRL grand final 2018: Luke Keary savours hard yards on march to glory

Luke Keary was magnificent when Cooper Cronk was rendered nearly immobile in the preliminary final against South Sydney.

Sydney Roosters half Luke Keary and his opposite number for Melbourne Storm, Cameron Munster, pose for a portrait ahead of the grand final. Picture: Brett Costello

Cooper Cronk is giving his God-or-science sermon behind the Sky Terrace at the SCG when a Sydney Roosters player of a lesser profile appears for a photo shoot.

Luke Keary may be forgiven a little self-consciousness while he’s asked to do a whole range of poses right next to a media pack — look serious for us, old mate, now gaze off into the distance, let’s try sultry, what about Zoolander — but he knocks off his commitments with a winking sort of humour. Comfortable in his own skin.

But then he can’t escape.

Cronk has attracted such a throng of reporters that Keary is trapped. In his white boots, he skips to his right to see if there’s a gap between the TV cameras and the back wall. There isn’t. He ducks to his left to see if he can slide behind Cronk. He can’t. So he takes the more no-nonsense approach. “Coming through,” he mumbles ahead of a sidestepping run that takes him to freedom. Only for the journalists to start converging on him when Cronk has finally finished speaking. Without the injured Roosters No 7, the No 6 has the grand final in his hands.

Asked about the magnitude of the occasion and his increased playmaking role if Cronk is ruled out, Keary says simply enough: “You work so hard all year to get yourself into the position of a grand final. It’s not the time of year to shit yourself, put it that way.”

Keary is hardly an imposing physical specimen.

While Cronk has the squat, power-packed physique of an Olympic gymnast, Keary is more Steve Buscemi playing Mr Pink in Reservoir Dogs. He thanks his father for the influence on his football.

He thanks his mother for keeping him on the straight and narrow as a human. Without her, he says, eyes sparkling, who knows where he may have ended up.

Keary was magnificent when Cronk was rendered nearly immobile by a shoulder injury in the preliminary final victory against South Sydney. He’s an intriguing interviewee. Looks you straight in the eye, which is rare. Answers without a moment of hesitation. He’s so up for the grand final that he’s literally bouncing in his chair. Even if Cronk plays 80 per cent fit, 50 per cent fit, 30 per cent fit or half-a-per cent fit, Keary’s involvement is going to be crucial and constant. He’s won a premiership with South Sydney. He’s on the cusp of repeating it with the Roosters. He’s a tough and accomplished little bugger.

“Man down, next man up,” he says. “You just get on with it. Do your job. Play your footy.

“I knew what Cooper brings to the team. Me, Jake (Friend), Teddy (James Tedesco), there was a few of us who had to pick up the load of what he couldn’t do.

“We were fortunate that we were leading when Cooper went down. If you were chasing points, it might have been a different story. His voice out there was very important to us in trying to manage the situation.”

What he loves about a game of rugby league is how it can take him to the point of exhaustion. That’s when the test of his character begins. The stages of this bone-jarring, fatiguing, end-to-end sport that provide the deepest tests of character. The moments when he needs to be orderly in the midst of chaos.

He’s passed all these examinations after taking the reins against Souths. He’s known there’s something wrong with Cronk at halftime. He’s known there’s something REALLY wrong with Cronk when the halfback hasn’t been able to take a penalty kick for touch. He may have to do it all again tomorrow night, for 80 minutes of hard yakka, if the Roosters are to dethrone the Storm

“In these big games, you get stages where everything you’ve planned is thrown out the window and you’ve just got to rely on — honestly, it’s just your mental strength,” he tells The Weekend Australian.

“Doesn’t matter how big you are, how fast, how strong, how fit, you’ve just got to mentally get yourself through it. You’re running on instinct. You’re really not thinking about anything in a way, but you’re still thinking clearly about what you have to do. If that makes sense. You’ve got to trust that you’ve done the work to get you through those moments. If you can come up with some important plays in those moments, there’s where you can get a bit of satisfaction from. A good, hard, physical, tough game of rugby league — you find out a lot about yourself.”

Cronk has told the media that we’re on a need-to-know basis when it comes to his availability for the grand final. The bloke who really needs to know is Keary.

“Honestly, and I don’t want to sound ruthless about anything, but it doesn’t make any difference to me,” he says.

“I've got to do my job. Whether he doesn’t play and someone else has to come in, I’ll make it pretty clear what I have to do — and I’ve just got to go and do it. If Cooper plays, I know what I’ve got to do. If Cooper doesn’t play, I’ll find out what I’ve got to do — and I’ll go do it.

“It’s a fun week. You’ve just got to stay relaxed and get on with it. I mean, if you’re not ready to go at this time of the year, you’re never going to be ready. You’ve trained nine months. Ten months. Like, it’s time to play. If you believe you’ve done the work, and you have done the work, it’s going to show on the field. There’s only one way you can go about it, and that’s attack it.”

Keary’s star has only risen after his mop-up job against Souths. He’ll play Origin next year.

NSW coach Brad Fittler has enormous raps on him and had him in the Blues camp for the second and third games of this year.

The 26-year-old will wear a Test jersey at some stage, maybe even this year against New Zealand and Tonga if he gets the Roosters over the line.

“It just fuelled me even more,” Keary says of his Origin experience under Fittler.

“I want to be in that team. I want to be able to play in that environment. I know what I have to do to get myself into position again. We all know how to get into rep teams, and that’s to play good footy in big games.

“Freddy (Fittler) and those guys in Origin were cool. It was refreshing to see how guys at that level went about it. They were very relaxed but very serious when they needed to be. They trained very hard. There was a lot of great footy minds around that team. There was a very good vibe. They were just very … they were just really comfortable in their own skins in knowing what needed to be done and when.”