Robbo the Redeemer: How coach brings out the best in his Roosters flock

1 week ago 4

Opinion

September 5, 2025 — 5.33am

It was all about the footy for Trent Robinson this week. Topics at his regular pre-match press stand-up included the Roosters’ drive to beat South Sydney and make the eight, and ensuring his team “nail the emotion around it, then also nail the execution of our play”.

He said Brandon Smith - the club’s former marquee recruit whose drug-supply allegations have entangled one of his own players - was only a factor insofar as his on-field attributes. And he was expansive and articulate about the development of his own players and of “finding our soul this year”.

There was chat about the “hate and anger” and sometimes neighbourly “banter” of this particularly fierce NRL rivalry, and at one point, he even encouraged the media before him “to build it up and do what you do”.

In all, the 12 minutes of situation normal rendered last Thursday’s performance all the more compelling.

Exactly one week ago, Robinson fronted the fourth estate like a porcupine who’d just spotted a predator. Quills up, poised to pierce the skin of any journalist posing a threatening question. A couple even met their prickly fate before they could finish their sentence, like the one who sought to confirm Victor Radley had the club’s 100 per cent support (“definitely”), and was stared down and twice cut off while attempting to ascertain what it would take for that stance to change.

Radley was named in a Queensland police summons relating to Smith’s scheduled September 18 appearance at Southport Magistrates Court, where Smith will be charged on one count of disclosing “inside knowledge” for illegal betting and one count of supplying dangerous drugs.

Trent Robinson has a history of defending his players to the hilt.

“Well, that’s speculation about something we have no information about,” Robinson had said. “You’re playing with people’s lives, this isn’t a game.”

It was in line with his other responses, which featured variations of “there’s nothing in front of us”, “there’s been nothing put to us”, “there are no questions [to ask] at the moment”, “rumours get around”, “people’s integrity at stake”.

We learned that Radley was “pretty hurt”. What we did never learn was the answer to that question regarding what it would take for the club’s stance on Radley to change.

This is the part where some cite Nick Politis’ zero-tolerance-on-drugs declaration. It is also the part where others remind those quoting the Roosters chairman that there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Radley or any other Roosters player, and that little more can be known until September 18, when Smith is due to appear at Southport Magistrates Court.

Roosters players during the golf trip on the Sunshine Coast that’s been dragged into Brandon Smith’s court summons.

But Robinson’s ambiguity here really just draws attention to the thing you cannot unsee once you have rewatched that press stand-up so many times, religious metaphors appear before your very eyes. It is Robinson standing atop the mount, arms outstretched, welcoming all Children of the Roosters into his embrace.

For he is Robbo the Redeemer, and his love is divine. When it comes to misdemeanours by his players, it transcends racial slurs, and (civil) sexual assault, and the traumatising of a New York family. And for now, at least, it will not be shaded by a golf trip police allege may have involved the supply of cocaine to one of his players.

Radley, as it stands, is free of NRL Integrity Unit sin. Absolved from the headbutt, the high tackle, the Byron Bay tackle, the in-flight intoxication. He had confessed, been told to “just act like a man in public and behave yourself”, and then reconciled with God (identity unknown but possibly “The Roosters Way”).

The 27-year-old is now a rugby league cleanskin, and Robinson is mediator of the New Covenant. To which you might say Jeremiah has a lot to answer for, but it is also part of what makes the Roosters head coach an example of excellence in his field. Robinson is known not just for his league nous but also his emotional intelligence. For understanding his players individually and bringing out their best.

Trent Robinson during his press conference last Thursday.

He has demonstrated a willingness to back them to the hilt. Sometimes he will do so even in surprising circumstances, when behaviour is not in keeping with “the Roosters way”. There is also a hint of a saviour complex, of some innate need to rehabilitate players from past transgressions.

The big controversies are well known.

In 2021, Robinson and the Roosters defended James Tedesco after his captain was accused of shouting “squid games” at a young woman of Vietnamese descent during a night out in Bondi. Tedesco later owned up and apologised, having been fined $10,000 for behaving “in a drunken and disorderly manner” and bringing the game into disrepute.

In 2024, he questioned whether Spencer Leniu had called Ezra Mam a “monkey” during the season-opener in Las Vegas, stating, “he obviously made the complaint, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right”. Lote Tuqiri accused Robinson of “gaslighting rubbish”, and Leniu served an eight-week suspension for racial abuse.

Robinson said the punishment was fair, but he did not believe Leniu to be a racist person, arguing: “You think that an immigrant, parents from Samoa and then from New Zealand and [growing up] in Mount Druitt, and he’s trying to put someone down through power, then we’re way off the mark.” There is an argument that he is correct about the context being complicated.

Eyebrows were raised in 2022 when the Roosters signed Matt Lodge (though the Broncos had already gone there and so had the Warriors), who was arrested in New York in 2015 after following two women into an apartment complex, then assaulting a man who came to their aid, and punching a hole in a wall where a young boy was hiding. After pleading guilty to reckless assault, he avoided jail, but was later sued by the victims of the rampage.

In 2016 came the recruitment of Zane Tetevano, who had been convicted of bashing his ex-girlfriend.

And Robinson came in for pretty strong criticism last year by signing and selecting Michael Jennings, who had served a drugs ban before being successfully sued in a civil court for sexually assaulting his wife. Jennings has never faced any criminal charges over the matter. The NRL opted against celebrating Jennings’ 300th NRL game, but the Roosters pressed on with their own plans. Robinson said the celebration was “not disrespectful to women”.

Michael Jennings in front of a banner celebrating his 300th NRL game at McDonald Jones Stadium.

“He’s come a long way, Jenko,” he said at the time. “You know, when I saw him mid-last year and where he was at, and I knew we had a responsibility - I guess that’s the thing, the questioning of it, you know, people can have their opinion, but I feel really proud about what we’re doing as a club to get a player that’s bled in our jersey to get back on his feet, working in the area that he’s passionate about and he’s good at, and to get his life and his family life back in order. That’s the celebration.”

In contrast, Shaun Kenny-Dowall lost his contract with the Roosters as a result of drugs charges and Robinson made it clear Tevita Pangai jnr did not fit the mould after multiple COVID-19 breaches with the Broncos.

Beyond this - and in the absence of a randomised control trial - the only feasible theory is that players are all in with him because he is all in with them. Just climb the mountain, and they are in his embrace, even if that looks like a porcupine against the media.

The evidence suggests the Roosters coach is basically a good, empathic man with flaws like everyone else and a single-minded investment in improving the lives of his players. That he could drop Sam Walker to reserve grade but also care enough to guide the then-future star back to the top and his full potential. That he possessed old-soul gravitas from a young age and steered the club to the 2013 premiership at 36.

“He’s the best coach I’ve had at club level, purely because of his footy IQ and his ability to get you uncomfortable,” Mitchell Pearce told the Footy Talk podcast last July. “Week in, week out, he makes you challenge yourself. He’s very good at that. He’s got a very high IQ, and he gets the best out of you.

“He’s very emotionally intelligent, Robbo. He reads people well and understands what makes people tick. And he challenges you. He’s always got a healthy uncomfortable environment. You’ve got to be all in with him, and if he senses that you’re not, he’ll make you feel it. You need to be an emotionally intelligent coach to be like that consistently, to have everyone on board and follow you. He’s done it for 12 years. His teams are always connected. There’s never really anyone that wants out. The majority of sides he’s coached are all committed, and that’s a credit to him and the way he coaches.”

It clearly works, perhaps this season more than any given the circumstances. The mass departures post-2024. The situation with Terrell May. The Brandon Smith thing happened. The season-opening 50-14 trouncing by Brisbane. Sam Walker was out for half the season. The rookie tally was higher than that of any other team. This was supposed to be a rebuilding phase, almost a starting-again phase.

Commentators rolled out those lopsided statistics against Penrith and Melbourne. Some asked that periodic question of whether Robinson was under pressure.

After that Broncos loss, Robinson was seemingly the only person to dismiss it all as “negative talk”. The new generation started to make their mark, Mark Nawaqanitawase became the most exciting guy to watch, and the Roosters slowly climbed the ladder. Then came last Thursday’s staunch defence of Radley and his golf buddies, and after that last Friday’s 40-10 win. Over the Storm. In Melbourne.

“I definitely think it’s come quicker than what other people thought,” Robinson said this Thursday, once he was back to talking footy. “On what we thought was possible, we set expectations on what we wanted to see, not where we were going to finish.

“When you don’t cap that, you see where people might get to, and there’s some people there that have performed really, really well and gone past where they were last year and gone to some heights that were probably unexpected. That’s really pleasing. Now we’re not limiting ourselves even to what’s next. Friday night, we want to earn the right to put a bit of a stamp on our season.”

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