After riding the highs of Las Vegas and the lows of the Spencer Leniu racism scandal, Roosters coach Trent Robinson hopes the return of spiritual leader Jared Waerea-Hargreaves can galvanise his team heading into Sunday’s clash with the Sea Eagles.
Having been sidelined since copping two suspensions in Round 26 last year, Waerea-Hargreaves is back for his 299th career game, sliding straight into the hole left by Leniu’s eight-game ban for contrary conduct.
“It’s important to have men like that [Jared] come back in and stand and say ‘let’s go’,” Robinson told media on Wednesday.
“This hasn’t been a great week but our job is to go out there and represent on Sunday again, and to have guys who have experienced lots of different things in their life to go in and say ‘let’s play football’ it’s really important.
“There has been no better man in a long, long time for the Roosters than Jared for us to stand behind.”
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In the wake of Leniu’s judiciary hearing on Monday night, Roosters CEO Joe Kelly said the prop was “incredibly remorseful” and had “learned a great deal from the past week”.
“We will continue to support him in any way we can and increase his education about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island cultures,” Kelly said.
Robinson confirmed that one of the key learnings for the club would be around the use of language and the way his players speak to each other and to rivals.
“We’ve had to have a couple of conversations about it and it's been great,” Robinson said.
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“How do you talk to each other, what do you think about the way that you talk to each other, how do you think you talk to people on the field, in the change room, in the workplace, all of that.
“We can keep the back and forth and the fight going or we can say ‘what’s going to improve out of this’ and we can try and do that within these walls – we need to – and so does society.
“This needs to be a changing moment for language… everybody needs to take a check on the way they speak to each other and the way that we change the way it looks in society, this isn’t an NRL problem.
"I think a lot of people have rightly stood up for their culture and made a point of it but it's sad to see guys like Choc [Anthony Mundine] and Trell [Latrell Mitchell] having a go at each other because want to be led by those guys in 'which direction do we go'.
“We can keep this going day on day or we say, ‘OK, well what does this mean’. Someone gives us some direction about moving forward and educate everybody more directly on what is acceptable and what’s not and then we’ll be in a positive place in a year’s time.
“We had different language we used 20-30 years ago that we wouldn’t even speak now, and this needs to go there."
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