Latrell Mitchell: If only the default response to hearing his name—“What now?”—actually referred to his rugby league talent and not, as it usually does, the ongoing public drama that is his life.
If not for his own sake, then at least for the sport’s fans. They’re entitled to expect more from their players than Mitchell’s offerings in 2024.
Last week’s leaked image of Mitchell bent over a table with what appears to be a white substance should have been the final nail in the coffin, the end of what the NRL can tolerate.
Their response? Just a one game ban. More players last round were handed two-week-plus bans for high tackles.
If centre Richie Kennar and forward Wiremu Greig’s punishments send the message that repeat concussion offences won’t be tolerated in the NRL, then what does Mitchell’s—who’s tainted the competition’s image again and again both on and off the field—portray to fans?
Since March he’s inserted himself into other players’ racial debacles, gotten into public spats with boxer Anthony Mundine and sworn five times in 30 seconds in a post-match interview swiftly pulled off air.
Mitchell had a heated argument with Braith Anasta in a Surry Hills restaurant over the former player’s criticism.
And while injured, he opted to attend a country rodeo instead of the Rabbitohs’ round 22 game.
All that with no more than a slap on the wrist (and that’s putting it lightly). Others in similar situations would be crucified.
Mitchell’s position as poster boy for rugby league might be a reason he’s gone virtually unscathed at the professional level, but this approach is what’s doing his reputation more damage in the public realm.
Therein lies fans’ combined frustration.
It’s one thing to watch one of the biggest talents of the game fail to live up to his potential in matches, but just as hard to witness his almost nonchalant disregard for the sport’s reputation.
Everyone makes mistakes, and as we know, when you throw a big paycheck at a young man, make them into a demigod, and then load them with the demands and pressures of performing at the highest level week after week some players crack under the weight of it all.
But Mitchell doesn’t seem to be cracking under stress. Rather he’s suffering from that element of the human condition we Christians know well: the perversity of the human heart.
Some stars love to play the larrikin, and when done in a harmless enough way the fans love it.
But after long, not a few loose units end up doing real damage to themselves and others, to the game’s reputation, to the fans.
How many fallen sports stars, undone by one scandal too many, look back with regret? How easy it is to blow the opportunity of a lifetime. Dostoevsky put it best: “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
The NRL markets their stars as brands and commodities of the sport. Many supporters buy into this branding exercise, holding up the stars as “athletes” while downplaying their human imperfections.
More often than ever players are no longer people, just another betting leg in the weekend multi.
Queue player abuse. But just to admit these stars are human still doesn’t dismiss them from the basic human standards still expected from them—one of which is to struggle against temptation.
Courtesy, integrity, charity and responsibility are values found anywhere as much as in in rugby league.
Mitchell, a professional player at a professional club in a top league, must get a grip on the standards required by his stardom—before his stardom slips through his grasp.