In early February 2020, I sat down with Latrell Mitchell outside a Redfern cafe to discuss rugby league’s troubled relationship with Indigenous players.
He’d come under fire the year before for not singing the national anthem while playing for NSW, then marching the streets of Sydney during Invasion Day protests. But much of the noise had come during the off-season when he left the Roosters, where he’d just won his second consecutive premiership, and signed with South Sydney.
The media interest had been intense, so much so that other Indigenous players were worried about Mitchell’s well-being.
They took their concerns to newly appointed ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys and, soon enough, all parties were gathering in a meeting room at Sydney Airport along with newspaper editors and TV executives to find common ground.
“We’ve never had that sort of support from the NRL before,” Mitchell told me that morning in Redfern. “To have the main guy sit down and have a conversation with us was awesome. We had some relief. We wanted to keep media outlets accountable for what they were saying and writing. You can’t put words in our mouth. I felt that was happening against me.”
I walked away from that meeting overwhelmingly impressed with Latrell. I didn’t agree that every rugby league reporter was out to get him, nor misquoted him. I didn’t agree with the way he and others conflated putrid posts on social media with genuine reporting of an important story.
South Sydney fullback Latrell Mitchell.Credit: Sam Mooy
But he was impressive: young, charismatic, abundantly talented and assured in his beliefs and abilities. And prepared to stand up to racism, which, as he explained in our interview, he’d been copping on a football field since he was eight.
Four years later and Mitchell has become a punchline, heading down the same self-indulgent path as Anthony Mundine, whom he sparred with on social media last week over Roosters prop Spencer Leniu calling Broncos five-eighth Ezra Mam a “monkey” during the double-header in Las Vegas.
Before Latrell was dropping live f-bombs he was helping police solve youth violence
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18.03.2024
In early February 2020, I sat down with Latrell Mitchell outside a Redfern cafe to discuss rugby league’s troubled relationship with Indigenous players.
He’d come under fire the year before for not singing the national anthem while playing for NSW, then marching the streets of Sydney during Invasion Day protests. But much of the noise had come during the off-season when he left the Roosters, where he’d just won his second consecutive premiership, and signed with South Sydney.
The media interest had been intense,........
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