Trent Robinson is known as one of the shrewdest coaches in rugby league, but will face a challenge like none before in his career at this year’s World Cup.
The Sydney Roosters coach has taken on a role as Director of Rugby with France, working alongside the national federation and the French national team coach Laurent Frayssinous to help build a culture for the side ahead of their hosting of the next World Cup in 2025.
Robinson brings a wealth of experience from the coaching ranks, and now must marry that to one of the most complex rugby league cultures on Earth.
France quickly became one of the great rugby league powers when the sport exploded into life there in the 1930s, but was banned during the puppet regime of Marshal Petain, aided by collaborators from French rugby union.
Now, Robinson is tasked with taking his experience from years of playing and coaching in France, add his expertise from the NRL and then build a national team culture that can sustain from this year’s tournament to 2025 and beyond.
“It’s interesting,” he told The Roar’s Rugby League World Cup podcast. “For me, I have my understanding of it because I’ve been involved with Toulouse and Catalans, the two professional teams, but I haven’t been involved with the French team.
“I’m interested to even to see what the values are when I go in, and how I can affect that from my understanding of the professional teams but also from the history of rugby league.
“I’m a big believer that the DNA gets passed down through the jersey, whether we consciously know it or not, so the history of French rugby league and the struggles through the Vichy regime and the banning of the game in 1946, and then the taking of grounds and clubs off rugby league.
“That was a big part in the history of rugby league and that stems to even when I was there in the early 2000s. I could feel that tension from way back then.
(Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
“The glory days of the 1950s and 1970s were the last bastions of the great French rugby league teams, so holding onto that tradition but also that fire that comes with the French and the history of rugby league. They’ve had to fight for their history the whole time.
“But how do we transfer that into a modern day successful national team. That’s the question that I have to work out as well.
Robinson, who has a French wife and deep connections to the country, is set to be the bridge between the day-to-day role that coach Frayssinous performs and the more strategic, high-level planning of the game in France.
“There’s a slight separation,” he explained. “Laurent is the coach, his job is to coach the team and he’s on the ground there. I have a lot of contact with Laurent.
“A part of that is my discussions earlier in the year around setting up a program, what are the different areas outside purely coaches and players that need to improve for us to be a better international team.
“The contact between the board, the federation and Laurent is my role and to give them perspective on that. I’ll be assisting the coaches and players and the team when it comes to the World Cup, but also observing what needs to happen from a medium term perspective.”
World Cup Chasers is our new Rugby League World Cup podcast and will be released weekly all the way through to the final at Old Trafford in November.
It features exclusive interviews, plus expert analysis from The Roar rugby league writers Mike Meehall Wood and Mary Konstantopolous, as well as Michael Carbone from Chasing Kangaroos, the original international rugby league podcast.
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