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.
