Why silent Latrell Mitchell is still league's loudest voice

The Age

23-05-2025

Latrell Mitchell's former coach Jason Demetriou says it as well as anybody.
'When Latrell speaks the narrative doesn't always go the direction he wants. The narrative can go anywhere because he's either loved or he's not liked.'
For nine months and counting, the NRL's most intriguing figure has kept his counsel and kept the quotes to himself.
Yet Mitchell is still rugby league's biggest star and accordingly, the man rugby league media flocks to most. Even when he won't talk.
Shots of him playing golf in the rain and his Instagram account - endorsing South Sydney's social media campaign to ditch Accor Stadium for Allianz - have counted as Latrell news this week from NSW Origin camp. Along with updates that Latrell still ain't talking. And conjecture about whether he should be.
It hasn't always been this way. More just Mitchell's latest wrestle in his complicated relationship with the fourth estate, not to mention his place in the rugby league ecosystem.
Now in his tenth season of first-grade, Mitchell has occupied rare air for years as far as newsworthiness goes. No-one in rugby league compares.
For what he does on the field that no-one else can. And what he says off the field that no-one else will.
Since the internet came into being, only Jarryd Hayne has broken it like Mitchell in this game. Though you suspect Andrew Johns would have rivalled them if his career - mercifully for the Eighth Immortal - hadn't just missed the rise of social media.
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Brisbane's enigmatic Reece Walsh might still match Mitchell some day, though more headlines are the last thing he or the Broncos need.
Nick Kyrgios is probably the only Australian athlete who trumps South Sydney's superstar in turning the heads of Sydney-based editors and TV producers chasing clicks, comments and views.
Mitchell's lasting impact on his Indigenous people will always, rightly, leave all that in the shade. I still recall standing in the SCG sheds in 2019, when he was just 22 and still a Rooster, as he addressed the torrent of racial abuse he was receiving on social media for the first time. I asked Mitchell if he truly grasped the pile-on coming his way.
'I don't care. Everything that is said about Aboriginal people really affects me,' was his simple, lasting reply.
On Indigenous issues and representation, no voice has rung louder or longer than Mitchell's in Australian sport since.
For a while afterwards, Mitchell revelled in the lighter side of breaking the world wide web too.
When the Rabbitohs flew him to Philadelphia to work with reconditioning guru Bill Knowles in 2022, Mitchell returned with his hamstrings in order and a new outlook on his rugby league life.
'I've been having fun, that's always been me, I've just been perceived as someone else,' Mitchell told colleague Christian Nicolussi during a mid-season South Sydney media day, conducting no less than a dozen interviews in the Redfern Oval stands.
'I've done it all my life, I've talked a big game but always backed it up.
'I think a lot more players need to be outspoken and confident in themselves, and understand the power you have in this game… In the US they are funny, and I took a lot out of the way they talk.
'They know the power they have. We need to start understanding that.'
Good times for all. Because Mitchell did back himself up with big game after big game in a career-best run. And delivered a slew of headline-worthy quotes to boot.
He declared 'that NSW jersey is mine' after terrorising incumbent Blues centre Matt Burton one Friday night, laughed off accusations of lying down to draw a penalty with ' call me Trell Milk ' and 'used [the media] to my advantage and the Roosters took the bait' when tensions were at their highest against his former club and Mitchell was being booed relentlessly.
Two years on, Mitchell understands the power he also wields in not speaking.
After the most tumultuous period of his career, when he briefly considered walking away from the game and Souths pondered similarly uncomfortable questions about his future at the club, Mitchell needed Wayne Bennett like never before.
Forget the side-mouth, single word answers and cranky old Wayne routine. The 75-year-old uses the media to his advantage better than anyone.
Bennett's return to the Rabbitohs coincided with Mitchell needing to put his head down. Needing to repay the club for a hellish campaign that ended with a foot injury, one-game ban and $40,000 in NRL and South Sydney fines (with a further $80,000 fine suspended) for the photos of him standing over a white substance in a Dubbo hotel room.
The Mitchell narrative of last year - which also included his involvement in the Spencer Leniu-Ezra Mam racism saga, an expletive-laden Triple M interview and suspension for belting Shaun Johnson - was wilder than ever as it grew untenable.
Nine months of no comment is Mitchell, with South Sydney's backing, taking charge of the narrative and letting 'his footy do the talking' - one of his favourite refrains over the years.
Nine months of no comment also leaves that potentially career-defining drama in Dubbo hanging in the air though. It remains the reference point for any reporter worth their salt because Mitchell has never addressed it himself.
In reality, most fans don't care. His NSW teammates certainly don't. Not when the 27-year-old can win games like no-one else - with frosty 49-metre field goals in driving rain, and clutch cut-out passes few have the temerity to even attempt, let alone pull off.
Where Mitchell's self-imposed, Rabbitohs-endorsed media ban gets especially intriguing is Origin, where he is the single most magnetic, game-breaking player in a contest full of them.
And where broadcasters Nine - publishers of this masthead - pay through the nose for the NRL's premium product, with all the trimmings, unrivalled player and coach access that money buys.
The only shame of Mitchell's NSW career is that he's only featured in eight of the 21 matches played since his 2018 debut.
The only other shame of Mitchell's NSW career is a regularly rocky relationship with Blues hierarchy.
The last time Mitchell truly spoke before his triumphant Origin return at the MCG, in an enthralling two-part fireside chat with Michael Chammas (conducted on an anonymous park bench in southern Sydney), he voiced publicly what has been said privately for years.
'There was a lot of doubt with NSW because I've never been looked after,' Mitchell said.
'I've been the scapegoat. I don't want to go into this camp being the scapegoat if they lose.'
Much of Mitchell's ill-will stemmed from his 2019 axing by then-coach Brad Fittler when he went missing at Suncorp Stadium. And belief his 2023 calf injuries stemmed from mismanagement in NSW camp, prompting South Sydney's physios to oversee fitness tests in conjunction with Blues staff.
Last year NSW coach Michael Maguire made a point of setting Mitchell at ease and diverting attention from his star's Origin return with his uncharacteristic 'glass houses' remark, dominating the pre-game build-up with headlines of his own.
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Mitchell promptly shot the MCG lights out for his coach, teammates and state.
Any thought the Blues might push Mitchell to break his media ban this time round was never getting off the ground. South Sydney have been telling reporters all year to try their luck, ask for a comment or two, in 2026.
Again, the reality is fans don't care. And the media, both in rugby league and wider still, will make do.
Whatever Mitchell does throughout the build-up, never mind the actual 80 minutes of Origin I, is like catnip in a never-sleeping, endlessly clicking, scrolling and commenting landscape anyway.
Even if rugby league's human headline refuses to speak.