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For Latrell Mitchell, rugby league greatness is where it’s always been — firmly within his grasp, should he want to take hold of it.
In a very literal sense, Wednesday night’s State of Origin is rugby league on its biggest possible stage.
There is nowhere else in the world where the sport could get a crowd which touches 90,000 and the rest of the footy world — and plenty of others beside – will be tuning in to see if the Blues can salvage the series.
Down 1-0, New South Wales needs a hero who can stand up to the glare of millions of eyes and who can grapple with the pressures of saving a state which sometimes seems to take a sick thrill in eating its own.
That’s to say nothing of the skill, power and belief required to lead a revival against a Queensland side who are mainlining enough pure, uncut Maroon spirit they’d bleed Fourex if you cut them open.
Mitchell is the kind of player through whom all these things, and just about everything else you can imagine, become possible.
That kind of ability can be a heavy thing to carry and there have been times Mitchell has struggled with the weight. It’s hard to hold the whole footy world in your hands.
But at his best, there’s nobody like him and there’s nothing he can’t do. Wednesday night won’t just mark his long-awaited Origin return, it shapes as one of the biggest nights of his career.
His budding legend will be put to the ultimate test. The state won’t be on his shoulders alone, but it will feel that way. With Latrell Mitchell, it always does.
‘He’d tear it up. It was stupid.’
It’s not fair to put an Origin result on one player, but fairness has never come into it Latrell Mitchell.
It’s been that way even before he came into first grade. The comparisons to Greg Inglis were made early and often when he was coming through the grades at the Roosters.
As far back as SG Ball, he was bigger and faster and stronger than just about everybody else. Even now, all these years later, you can make the case he’s never met his athletic equal.
“I only played a few times before I had to go to school footy, but he was a freak,” said Angus Crichton.
“He’d tear it up, it was stupid, it was boys against men.”
That continued through the Under 20s, where Mitchell was the kind of player where one big highlight or the smallest contract talk would send all the horses running.
The Inglis comparisons really picked up after that, even if they did both players a disservice in reducing one to be an imitation or prototype of the other. It was a symptom of rugby league’s occasional inability to imagine something that doesn’t already exist.
Mitchell is a better creator, Inglis was a better finisher. Power is the base of Mitchell’s game and always has been, Inglis built the first half of his career on speed before turning to strength as he got older.
There was only one Greg Inglis, just like there is only one Latrell Mitchell and if there are similarities they run deeper than their body types or their backgrounds.
What they have most in common are the ethereal, untouchable things like their charisma, their presence, the kind of confidence they can inspire in teammates around them just by being around them.
Even then, the way they go about it is difference. Mitchell is loud and extroverted. He can fill a stadium with his voice, let alone a room. He couldn’t hide his emotions if he tried and he never tries.
As a player, Inglis was quieter, more reserved. But he made everything feel bigger just because he was there. His actions always spoke louder than words and at times it felt like everybody else was helpless before the power of his destiny.
That’s how it was one of the few times the two crossed paths on the field in Mitchell’s Origin debut back in 2018. That was also at the MCG and Inglis was less than a year from retirement, but he was still every inch the apex predator of the game’s hardest arena.
Crichton was there for it as well, as part of coach Brad Fittler’s record 11 Blues debutants and he remembers how Inglis brought the thunder to inspire his younger teammates.
“There was a bunch of us all going down to debut together, so there was a lot of nerves and angst and excitement,” Crichton said.
“GI was on a mission that night, it was his first game as Queensland captain. He was hitting everything that moved.”
But the Blues got it done that night with Mitchell crashing over for a key try in the second half. When he did, he ran over Will Chambers to win the first of many battles with the hardscrabble Queenslander.
At the time, Chambers had a fair case to being the best centre in rugby league. He was certainly the toughest and was well known for his overwhelming physical approach which included plenty of sledging, a whole lot of muscle and then a little more sledging, just to be safe.
But he had no answers for Mitchell’s size or his strength, or his willingness to rise to a challenge. The Blues wrapped up the series in Game II. It was Inglis’s final game in Maroon.
Mitchell scored again and dominated Chambers again. Later that year he did the same in the Roosters grand final win.
That whole season was like watching a superhero gain his powers, like seeing a boy become a man, like seeing a prince kneel down and rise as a king.
An unblemished legend
Mitchell’s debut Origin series came six years ago but he’s only played four games in the time since and it feels like he’s been to hell and back just about every year.
Just as the highs with Mitchell are dizzying, the lows can be terrifying with their depths and their darkness. He attracts the heaviest of praise and the harshest of scrutiny and it often happens so close together at such a breakneck pace it’s a wonder anyone can stay on their feet.
Sometimes, he’s earned it both ways. Other times, he’s had to deal with things no person, let alone no footballer, should have to bear.
Even this season, Mitchell has been as reviled as much as he’s now been celebrated. It wasn’t so long ago he was being raked over the coals for South Sydney’s poor start to the season, a sweary post-match interview and a mindless challenge on Shaun Johnson which earned him a suspension that now seems to have reset him.
It’s a pattern that Mitchell has gone through before. After that breakout 2018 season, Mitchell was dropped after Origin I of the 2019 series. He had a poor game in an unexpected New South Wales defeat and Chambers, despite losing the war decisively, won the final battle between the two.
It’s clearly a situation which still rankles Mitchell and complicates his relationship with State of Origin. As recently as a few weeks before Game I there were reports he was considering ruling himself out of the series and he had a cryptic Instagram post the night of Origin I.
He has done precious little media in the lead up to Wednesday’s match, save for one press conference at the beginning of camp, but some of his comments surrounding the times he’s been blamed for New South Wales losing in the past are impossible to ignore.
That stands out because Mitchell has never played in a losing Origin series. Apart from dead rubbers, the only game he’s ever lost in a Blue jersey was that night back in 2019.
It kicked off an uncertain period for him. He left the Roosters at the end of that season and his move to South Sydney was protracted and difficult.
His early days as a Rabbitoh weren’t easy either, and he was buried for it as readily as he was praised.
That season also began an unfortunate run of outs for him when it came to Origin. He’s only played one series since then, missing out in 2020 due to injury, withdrawing from selection from the 2022 decider before being picked for the first two games of 2023 only to be ruled out during the week. It’s a long time to be away.
But the one series he did play was unforgettable. It is seared in our memories and it’s why, to many, Mitchell will always be made for Origin.
He played a huge part in driving the Blues to their most dominant series win in decades as they outscored Queensland 76-6 across the first two games.
His play was inspired and inspiring and while Tom Trbojevic took home the Wally Lewis Medal as player of the series you can make a strong case it should have been Mitchell.
Some of his current teammates, like Brian To’o and Jarome Luai, were Origin rookies back then and looked to Mitchell for guidance, even though he’d only played the four games himself.
“He made our jobs so easy, he made us feel more comfortable, he let us know the reason we got there is because we worked so hard. (He told us) don’t waste this opportunity,” To’o said.
“He plays with so much passion, his energy flows on to me and allows me to do my job. He’s definitely someone who’s in my trophy case of the best I’ve played alongside.”
Mitchell scored in each of the three matches that year as Queensland looked helpless trying to contain him.
Depending on how the rest of this series plays out, it’s his finest hour in a Blue jersey and perhaps in the whole of his rugby league career.
It’s also the reason the expectations around his Origin return are higher than ever before.
Sometimes, presence is most felt in its absence and Mitchell, it’s worth repeating, has never played in a losing Origin series.
Every other major Blue of recent years, from Nathan Cleary and James Tedesco, to Tom and Jake Trbojevic, to the newer brigade of To’o and Luai and Isaah Yeo, have been tarred by defeat at some point.
All those players have had to grapple with the fact that Origin is not just about the glory of winning but also about who must bear the shame of losing.
But not Mitchell. His legend is still unblemished and the longer he went without playing the more powerful those memories became.
Mitchell wasn’t there when the Blues lost to the worst Queensland team ever and he wasn’t there as the Fittler era fell apart and he wasn’t there as the Maroons once again seized control of Origin football over the past two seasons.
It makes him the last hero of a lost time, a survivor from an era that already feels so long ago now. That’s why everything about his return has been so heightened. He has to live up to the legend we have created around him.
The only way that can happen is if the Blues win in Melbourne then somehow claim the decider in Brisbane. Asking for either is asking for a lot, but if the salvage mission is to come true it starts on Wednesday.
True to form, Mitchell has dominated the build-up without even trying. A concreter marking him during an opposed session becomes a back page story because it instantly becomes one of the biggest days of that fella’s life.
Discourse about whether the Maroons fear him, like he is a situation to be managed not a problem to be conquered like the rest of the Blues, lasts for days. He sparks betting plunges as the punters flock to back their hero and prove their belief with money.
He holds the eyes of the footy world like he always does. He did not choose for it to be that way, the people chose it for him because they cannot stop looking.
‘It’s gangster’
Amid all this talk of history and memory and discourse and Mitchell, there is still a game to be played before whatever happens next begins to happen.
Lining up at left centre, Mitchell will be reunited with Crichton, a former Roosters and Blues teammate, and Luai and To’o, who played alongside him down that same edge in the 2021 series.
All three of them work well alongside Mitchell. Crichton, who is in close to career-best form, offers a nice counterpart with his consistency and work-rate.
To’o does the yardage of two men already, which frees Mitchell up to be a strike weapon and Luai is planning to feed him the ball early and often.
“I’m excited for him. There’s been a lot of talk around Latrell, about him wanting to play Origin, but he’s here now. He’s got that aura. He’s made for Origin,” Luai said.
“It’s gangster, man, (playing with him) it’s really cool.
“I’ve had success with him in this Blue jersey so I was excited when he got named and I was excited he was excited to come in and play his best game.
“It’s an awesome vibe around him and the energy he’s brought into camp.”
Mitchell’s inclusion was enough for everyone in New South Wales to feel like things were looking up but looks aren’t everything.
Queensland will do their best to get at Mitchell but not in a niggling, attack-dog kind of way, because that hasn’t worked for anybody since Chambers tried it all those years ago.
They’ll run traffic at him, in an effort to tire him out, and there’ll be plenty of attacking patterns, with an aim to force him to make as many decisions as possible.
Centre is a hard position to play and Mitchell has only done it a few times since leaving the Roosters all those years ago.
His stature means he is always one of the hinges on which a game swings, but the technical factors of the match will only heighten that again.
No matter how you try and slice it, Mitchell will be at the core of what happens on Wednesday.
The result will not be his alone, but that won’t matter. Mitchell is one of those rare players where what he does matters less than how he makes people feel and when you can do anything, you get blamed for everything.