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Can Justin Holbrook be the next Trent Robinson?

Roar Guru
1st September, 2020
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Roar Guru
1st September, 2020
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Hyperbolic click-bait ‘journalism’ incoming.

Gold Coast have found a photogenic manager that plays attractive rugby league and has taken them one level above awful, and suddenly every meter maid and her dog thinks he’s the next big thing.

As with all trends, I’m going to jump on the bandwagon a few weeks too late. But unlike some Gold Coast fans I want to put forward some old-world viewpoints to back up the idea that Holbrook may be on a similar career trajectory to Trent Robinson.

We’re all aware of Trent Robinson’s impact on the Roosters, and if you’re a Bunny like me, painfully so. He took a side that finished 13th in 2012 to four titles and three premierships in seven seasons.

Now not for one moment am I suggesting Holbrook will turn the Titans into the next NRL dynasty. There’s some crazy stuff on the internet, but that would just about take the biscuit. However, I can definitely see comparisons between his current project and a previous Trent Robinson gig.

With a playing history in the south of France, Robinson took the reins of the newish Catalan Dragons at the end of the 2010 season. They had finished rock bottom and were only spared relegation thanks to yet another one of the northern game’s idiosyncratic restructurings, which paints Australian politics as a picture of longevity and calmness.

He took over the side that had the previous season managed to finish below even London, whose fan-base invented the idea of physical distancing. In two seasons he took them to two play-offs, including a fourth-place finish with just one loss in Perpignan all season, and a Challenge Cup quarter-final run.

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He may not have won the Super League grand final, but then only four sides ever have. More to the point, the Moore Park hot seat beckoned, and the rest, as they say, is very annoying history.

Sydney Roosters

(Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

Justin Holbrook has similar Super League pedigree. He took over a St Helens side languishing at the wrong end of the table in 2017, taking them on a surprise play-off run, and subsequently winning back-to-back league titles.

They made a Challenge Cup final only to embarrass themselves in front of the onlooking Prince Harry (how the tables have turned), but found redemption with a comfortable grand final victory. For a club used to dining at the posh end of the high table, it was very much mission accomplished.

He’s proved his managerial nous on both sides of the world. But rather than think of St Helens and Holbrook in the same way as Robinson’s pre-Chooks stint in France, it is perhaps more accurate to compare his Catalans stint to Holbrook’s current tenure in Queensland.

Could the Gold Coast be the audition for Holbrook to progress onto bigger and better things? Granted, the comparison is not pinpoint – especially with Robinson’s prior history in the east and the fact that there is no hemispheric jump to make.

But there’s no doubt that Holbrook was taking over a Gold Coast club of not much more than Super League standard. They have enough wooden spoons to earn a Greta Thunberg rebuke about deforestation, and to claim false comparison by suggesting Gold Coast were somehow streaks ahead of Super League quality would be comedic if it weren’t so utterly ludicrous.

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Justin Holbrook

(Photo by Dave Howarth/PA Images via Getty Images)

I have no time for anyone who would take Greg Leleisiuao, as good as he is, over Tommy Makinson.

I don’t think the good people of Robina will be rolling out the ticker tape any time soon. But if given backing by the bigwigs upstairs, possibly reunited with some of his St Helens favourites like Regan Grace or Jonny Lomax, they can definitely make a run in the play-offs in the coming years.

The fact that Luke Thompson may head to the Gold Coast for career improvement speaks volumes of the work already done by Holbrook.

Just as Robinson’s promising French showing spring-boarded him to an NRL powerhouse and subsequent era-creating form, so too can Holbrook’s promise put him on the radar of the game’s giants.

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When Wayne Bennett eventually leaves South Sydney after one press conference too many that finally breaks him, or premiers Annastacia Palaszczuk and Daniel Andrews starve Craig Bellamy of more Queensland talent, why wouldn’t the higher-ups at Redfern or Melbourne not at least consider a proven winner with a knack of getting more than the best out of his players?

And to any Gold Coast fans despairing that this represents the height of your club’s ambition, I’ll give you some consolation. Six seasons after Robinson left Catalans, they triumphed at Wembley in the Challenge Cup final, the first non-domestic side to win the competition. That gives hope to the Warriors too, but even my optimism has its limits.

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