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Fergo is the reason why the Roosters' title defence is stuttering

16th July, 2019
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16th July, 2019
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A number of valid reasons have been given for the Roosters’ shaky title defence, which has seen them drift out of minor premiership contention after five defeats in seven.

Luke Keary’s cruel luck with concussions. Jake Friend’s ruptured bicep. Latrell Mitchell’s distractions. Jared Waerea-Hargreaves’ recurring appointment at the judiciary. Having to blood young talent sooner than planned. And, of course, Origin commitments.

The old adage about how hard it is to go back-to-back has rung true. Trent Robinson has refused to make excuses. He’s been here before, knows premierships aren’t won mid-season and remains unshakably calm about the run-in to September.

But watching the Roosters this season, there is a sense that something else is missing. Or, to be clearer, someone.

When it was announced this time last year that Blake Ferguson would be taking up a lucrative three-year deal at Parramatta from 2019, there was very little outcry from Roosters fans that the club hadn’t tried harder than a one-year offer to retain him.

In 2015, Ferguson arrived in the Eastern Suburbs with oversized baggage. Sacked from the Canberra Raiders, his signing had been delayed by a 2014 conviction for indecent assault and made his name a byword for everything wrong with the modern game.

While he’d settled under Robinson’s tutelage and looked one of the game’s foremost wingers in patches, there remained a nagging proneness to self-inflicted calamity, both on and off the pitch.

In particular, the infamous all-day drinking session with Josh Dugan at the Lennox Point Hotel, mid-Origin series in 2017, had seen both players exiled from rep football and was a major catalyst for the Blues’ Daley-to-Fittler cultural revolution.

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But the year the Roosters decided to let him go was also the year that Ferguson, to his immense credit, decided to sort himself out. With Robinson’s guidance, he swore off alcohol from pre-season onwards, trained the house down and emerged for 2018 a different beast entirely.

Blake Ferguson of the Sydney Roosters

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Blake Ferguson 2.0 has never looked back.

If Cooper Cronk became the pilot of the team last season, there is no doubt that Ferguson was its engine – never shirking a high ball, running relentlessly on first tackle and routinely providing decisive moments inside the opposition half.

Sceptics waited for the mask to slip, for the old Fergo to reappear and for performances to drop off, particularly after his upcoming move to Parramatta was announced. Instead he kept getting better.

A monster 2018 saw him top the competition for run metres and line breaks, as well as the Roosters’ own try scoring chart. His parting gift – a key role in the grand final dismantling of the Storm – showed just what a hole he would leave.

Beyond his own stats, he makes the players around him better too. Joseph Manu, in particular, went from a promising to devastating centre in partnership with Ferguson down the right edge in 2018. It’s no coincidence that his 2019 has been notably quieter.

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Ferguson’s impact on the Eels this campaign has been just as obvious, the stellar addition to a side that has gone from wooden-spooners to top eight contenders. Brad Arthur has missed no opportunity to heap praise on his professionalism and influence on the club.

The scale of his redemption was shown last week, when having not only been welcomed back into the Blues’ camp for Origin 2 and 3, Ferguson played a starring role in the series’ defining moment – laying on that last-gasp try for former Roosters team-mate James Tedesco.

The Roosters brilliant left edge – Tupou, Mitchell, Keary and Cordner – is rightly celebrated, but their right edge has lacked Ferguson’s power and game-breaking ability at times this season.

Veteran signing Brett Morris is only just back from a long injury layoff. English import Ryan Hall is finding his feet after ACL rehab and improving by the week, but lacks Ferguson’s confidence under the high ball and is yet to gel with Manu. Rookie winger Matt Ikuvalu has shown promise and vulnerability.

It might be too soon to say that not retaining Ferguson has been decisive. With rested Blues Tedesco and Cordner returning to the side this weekend, the Chooks should finally have their best side out on the park for the first time since opening round.

An unbeaten run into finals is well within the premiers’ ability and you wouldn’t bet against them from there. But if recent wobbles are any precedent and they do miss out, even a club so self-assured as the Roosters may rue letting go of that man Fergo.

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