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Dan Walsh SMH
July 16, 2023 — 7.45pm
History is on the Roosters’ side, and three premierships in a decade are rightly pointed to, when club heavyweights talk of their current lot in the Bondi Life.
History won’t quite be made if Trent Robinson manages to pull his star-studded side out of a 2023 tailspin that requires at least six, most likely seven, wins from their last seven games to just play finals. Eight straight post-Origin wins just last year remedied a similar plight.
But history also points to the hammer falling soon enough - just not on Robinson, given those three titles and the club’s unwavering faith in one of the best coaches of the modern era.
Put plainly, the Roosters deal in premierships, not just finals appearances, and previous slides have been dealt with judiciously and ruthlessly.
The last slip, and it was only from defending premiers to an exit in the second week of the finals, saw Kyle Flanagan endure a topsy-turvy 2020 campaign replacing Cooper Cronk, the year ending in a Friday night loss against Canberra.
By the following Tuesday,Flanagan was told he was no longer in the club’s halves planningand by the end of the month he was gone.
Three years prior, Cronk’s signing in late 2017 proved one of the best pieces of recruitment in the NRL era, back-to-back premierships coming 18 months after the worst season of Robinson’s tenure - a second-last finish in 2016.
Mitchell Pearce was a favourite of Robinson, chairman Nick Politis and countless others at the club.
But he was still the fall guy for Cronk to arrive as “someone to win them a comp this year”, as Pearce himself put it after moving to Newcastle.
Already this season, assistant coach Jason Ryles and prop Matt Lodge haveexited in quick time once the wind blew that way.
Lengthy absences for Brandon Smith, Sam Walker, Angus Crichton and Sitili Tupouniua haven’t helped a season-long search for cohesion in a roster and playmaking stocks rivals would kill for.
In turn, Robinson and chief playmaker Luke Keary have both spoken of “a little bit of angst when we play” that is “choking the club at the moment”.
The coach has shouldered responsibility for easing that pressure all season, and even with a 7-10 record and the second-worst offensive return in the game, there’s genuine surprise and few definitive explanations when experts try to reckon with the Roosters slide in 2023.
“I don’t think it comes from Trent Robinson,” Andrew Johns said of the club’s poor form on The Sunday Footy Show.
“I think it comes from the senior players. They’re the ones out there in the trenches, I think it’s the senior players that have got to challenge the rest of them.”
Robinson conceded frustration, too, after Saturday’s heavy loss to Melbourneat both “our end of sets [that] were as bad as I’ve seen”, and Walker’s niggling ACL issue that has now kept him off the paddock for months.
The belief in Walker as the Roosters’ future is still steadfast, and that he’ll return, like so many young halves, as a better player for his mid-season axing. Elsewhere, more questions than answers remain.
Arguments can and have repeatedly been made around the best use and positions for Smith, Joey Manu, Joseph Suaalii, James Tedesco and Victor Radley as each have battled for fluency and form this season.
“You know that as a player, too,” former captain Braith Anasta said. “You feel the pressure, you feel the outside noise. You know they’re looking from outside in.”
The generational turnover from the Roosters’ back-to-back titles has been ongoing for several years now and continues next season as Spencer Leniu and Dominic Young arrive on lucrative deals.
Keary, Daniel Tupou and Jared Waerea-Hargreaves are all at the back end of their careers and are joined on an off-contract list from November 1 by Crichton, Smith (2025 player option) and Manu, while Suaalii is already rugby-bound at the end of 2024.
Robinson and the Roosters have never shied away from a tough decision or the conversation that comes with it. History says there’s a few coming in the near future.
July 16, 2023 — 7.45pm
History is on the Roosters’ side, and three premierships in a decade are rightly pointed to, when club heavyweights talk of their current lot in the Bondi Life.
History won’t quite be made if Trent Robinson manages to pull his star-studded side out of a 2023 tailspin that requires at least six, most likely seven, wins from their last seven games to just play finals. Eight straight post-Origin wins just last year remedied a similar plight.
But history also points to the hammer falling soon enough - just not on Robinson, given those three titles and the club’s unwavering faith in one of the best coaches of the modern era.
Put plainly, the Roosters deal in premierships, not just finals appearances, and previous slides have been dealt with judiciously and ruthlessly.
The last slip, and it was only from defending premiers to an exit in the second week of the finals, saw Kyle Flanagan endure a topsy-turvy 2020 campaign replacing Cooper Cronk, the year ending in a Friday night loss against Canberra.
By the following Tuesday,Flanagan was told he was no longer in the club’s halves planningand by the end of the month he was gone.
Three years prior, Cronk’s signing in late 2017 proved one of the best pieces of recruitment in the NRL era, back-to-back premierships coming 18 months after the worst season of Robinson’s tenure - a second-last finish in 2016.
Mitchell Pearce was a favourite of Robinson, chairman Nick Politis and countless others at the club.
But he was still the fall guy for Cronk to arrive as “someone to win them a comp this year”, as Pearce himself put it after moving to Newcastle.
Already this season, assistant coach Jason Ryles and prop Matt Lodge haveexited in quick time once the wind blew that way.
Lengthy absences for Brandon Smith, Sam Walker, Angus Crichton and Sitili Tupouniua haven’t helped a season-long search for cohesion in a roster and playmaking stocks rivals would kill for.
In turn, Robinson and chief playmaker Luke Keary have both spoken of “a little bit of angst when we play” that is “choking the club at the moment”.
The coach has shouldered responsibility for easing that pressure all season, and even with a 7-10 record and the second-worst offensive return in the game, there’s genuine surprise and few definitive explanations when experts try to reckon with the Roosters slide in 2023.
“I don’t think it comes from Trent Robinson,” Andrew Johns said of the club’s poor form on The Sunday Footy Show.
“I think it comes from the senior players. They’re the ones out there in the trenches, I think it’s the senior players that have got to challenge the rest of them.”
Robinson conceded frustration, too, after Saturday’s heavy loss to Melbourneat both “our end of sets [that] were as bad as I’ve seen”, and Walker’s niggling ACL issue that has now kept him off the paddock for months.
The belief in Walker as the Roosters’ future is still steadfast, and that he’ll return, like so many young halves, as a better player for his mid-season axing. Elsewhere, more questions than answers remain.
Arguments can and have repeatedly been made around the best use and positions for Smith, Joey Manu, Joseph Suaalii, James Tedesco and Victor Radley as each have battled for fluency and form this season.
“You know that as a player, too,” former captain Braith Anasta said. “You feel the pressure, you feel the outside noise. You know they’re looking from outside in.”
The generational turnover from the Roosters’ back-to-back titles has been ongoing for several years now and continues next season as Spencer Leniu and Dominic Young arrive on lucrative deals.
Keary, Daniel Tupou and Jared Waerea-Hargreaves are all at the back end of their careers and are joined on an off-contract list from November 1 by Crichton, Smith (2025 player option) and Manu, while Suaalii is already rugby-bound at the end of 2024.
Robinson and the Roosters have never shied away from a tough decision or the conversation that comes with it. History says there’s a few coming in the near future.
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