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Opinion
Latrell Mitchell may be the most exciting player in the NRL.
He may not have Nathan Cleary’s consistency or have had a breath-taking, breakout season like we saw last year from Tom Trbojevic, but when you think of game-breaking ability, pure skill, raw size and power, as well as swagger and that little bit of rock-star arrogance, no one lights up the NRL like South Sydney’s fullback.
And at a little over 12 months younger than Tommy Turbo, it wouldn’t surprise too many if his centre partner in the NSW Origin side finally had the Dally M-winning season he’s been on the verge of for a number of years now.
Having achieved so much at an insanely young age – by 22, Latrell had won two premierships, four Kangaroos caps, four Origin jerseys, and a Dally M Centre Of The Year award – he’s been marked perhaps a tad unfairly.
Take our own assessment of Latrell here on The Roar ahead of the 2020 season, when he dropped from being regarded as the fifth-best player in the NRL the preceding year all the way down to 20th.
(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
“The funny thing is, while he got a lot of bad press in 2019, he still played Origin footy, won a second-successive premiership and kept his place in Mal Meninga’s Kangaroos side, while his 273 points – including 19 tries, which had him second behind only Maika Sivo for the Ken Irvine Medal – made him the comp’s highest point-scorer for the second year running,” I wrote at the time.
“Tally those individual achievements up and you’ve got what most players in the history of rugby league would proudly call their best-ever season. Yet we’re dropping him 15 places!”
There are two knocks on Latrell and both have their merits.
The first is that he hasn’t really put together a consistently brilliant season, with former coach Wayne Bennett noting just this week, “We have not seen anywhere near the consistency he can play with.”
To say he shows flashes isn’t correct, because he can be a game-breaker a number of weeks in a row. It’s more that the difference between his best and worst game is still too large.
That’s probably a result of his ceiling being so bloody high – he’s got all the ingredients to be the best there is – but the greats stay close to that level throughout the year.
The second knock is probably why the first knock exists – he spends far too much time on the sidelines as a result of his own stupid actions.
Last year, Mitchell copped ten weeks’ worth of time on the pine as a result of two spectacularly ugly incidents, both of which were entirely avoidable.
(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
The first saw him put his elbow into David Nofoaluma’s face, which resulted in a four-week suspension.
The second was, of course, Latrell ending Joey Manu’s season with a shoulder to his ex-Roosters teammate’s face, which earned Mitchell a six-week stint on the sidelines.
It’s worth noting that both suspensions were as long as they were because Mitchell had priors at the judiciary, having spent two weeks out in 2020 for an arm to the face of Josh Reynolds during a spiteful game against the Tigers in which Mitchell was also fined for a high hit that occurred later in the game.
Basically, he’s got some pretty serious form when it comes to attacking the heads of opposition players and people who repeatedly commit the same dangerous acts should spend longer and longer out of the game.
So it was frustrating to hear Mitchell say earlier this year, when asked if he needs to change the way he plays, “I don’t think I need to, I think the game needs to change.”
Like, are you serious man?
You’ve been banished to the sidelines for 12 weeks over the past two years because you keep smacking people in the head and it’s everyone else that needs to be different?
I understand the anger some people feel about the perceived hyper-focus on protecting the head in the game of rugby league; that sometimes accidents happen and in a split second something can go awry with zero ill intent.
But that’s not what Latrell did when he made the decision to whack Reynolds in 2020, nor when he belatedly stuck his arm out to collect Nofoaluma a year later.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
As for the whole issue of whether he intended to hit Manu the way he did, when it comes to a shot like that, a lack of intent can’t be an excuse for what transpires. If it was clear he deliberately did it, a la a latter-day John Hopoate, then he should have got 12 weeks. But taking him at his word, that it was just a high-speed accident, the lack of care shown for his fellow professional was at least reckless.
And, given he was carrying loading from all these previous hits to players’ heads, he got the lengthy suspension he deserved.
He needs to cut that crap out of his game.
He needs to change.
Because you need your best players to actually, y’know, play if you hope to win the big games. And with Latrell in their team in last year’s grand final, a game Souths lost 14-12, a very different outcome would have been on the cards.
Million Dollar Man series
A look at each club’s million-dollar man – the player broadly acknowledged to be taking up the largest individual chunk of the salary cap (even if they aren’t actually quite grossing seven figures).
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» An off year or the beginning of the end for Jason Taumalolo?
» Scorned by Souths, it’s Reynolds to the rescue in Brisbane
» How much blame does Luke Brooks deserve for the Wests Tigers’ finals drought?
» Addin Fonua-Blake took the green but can he stop seeing red?
» Ben Hunt and how a single moment can define an entire career
» Jack Wighton wins awards but can he win a comp?
» Andrew Fifita’s busted knees, induced coma and $100K per game
» David Fifita, the richest benchwarmer in NRL history
» Is Kalyn Ponga red and blue, Redcliffe or misread?
» Mitchell Moses and Sterlo’s curse
» How much can a Teddy bear?
» The cake, not the Cherry on top
Best-case scenario
Latrell comes back from his latest suspension in Round 2 a changed man.
With Adam Reynolds gone and a young core of talent emerging throughout the Bunnies’ spine, perhaps this is the season Latrell recognises that he needs to step up in terms of his leadership of this team.
And that means no more lengthy spells on the sidelines because he lost his cool and guillotined another bloke.
If the only game Latrell misses this year is tonight’s match against the Broncos, if he is otherwise fit and focused, then there’s every chance he wins the Dally M as the best player in the game.
Which would almost guarantee that Souths would have another deep run in the finals, because that’s what tends to occur when the best player in the game is going on a tear – he takes the rest of his team with him.
I don’t think a premiership is on the cards this year – there’s been too much upheaval in terms of the coach, captain and Origin players leaving – but a big year for Latrell means the drop off from 2021 will be far less dramatic.
(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
Worst-case scenario
The major concern is that Latrell genuinely believes he’s the victim in all his head-attacking incidents and therefore he really doesn’t need to change.
Major changes to the judiciary may have been announced on Thursday, seeing an end to the points system and all players starting the year with a clean slate, but Latrell went after the head of opposition players on multiple occasions last year.
If he does that again, the new system is still going to rule him out for significant periods of the year.
That would likely see the inverse of the above scenario, with the Bunnies limping into the lower half of the eight and having their season extinguished in Week 1 of the finals as Latrell watches on from the coaches’ box for the third season in a row.
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