Ninety-two lower house seats in your party’s biggest election win since World War II? Or a 49-metre field goal in one of your team’s greatest wins in recent memory?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese lapped up both in one hell of a week for the Rabbitohs No.1 ticket-holder.
No wonder he was high-fiving and cuddling Latrell Mitchell like one of his teammates in the Souths sheds – because the most powerful man in the country was just like every other man, woman and rugby league child during those heady moments of a thrilling Rabbitohs comeback.
Hooker Siliva Havili had no idea Mitchell was lining up his shot when he passed to his fullback standing on the wrong side of halfway, with three minutes to play and scores locked at 14-apiece.
Prop Sean Keppie watched on from the sideline with tissues stuck up his bleeding nose. Lock Keaon Koloamatangi was a bundle of nerves alongside him, the entire Souths bench thinking “‘oh no’ because he was 50 [metres] out.”
The cameras that panned to Wayne Bennett in his coach’s box showed the 75-year-old not moving a muscle both before and after Mitchell’s kick sailed between the uprights for one of the longest field goals in rugby league’s collective memory. Typical Wayne.
Anthony Albanese congratulates Latrell Mitchell in the South Sydney sheds.Credit: Nine
But the prime minister?
“He was like the rest of us there. Extremely happy and almost in a state of disbelief at how sweet Latrell hit it. Great week for Albo,” Souths CEO Blake Solly said, having watched the stunning 22-14 over Brisbane alongside Albanese.
Bennett has rightly scoffed when questions of Mitchell’s NSW Origin place have been put to him of late, though he did note on Friday that “you [reporters] ask a lot of funny questions”.
Mitchell’s relish for the big stage and ability to deliver on it should make him one of the first Blues Laurie Daley picks, even with Bradman Best being an outstanding incumbent at left centre in his own right.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese embraces Latrell Mitchell in the Rabbitohs’ dressing room.
The bigger question is where Mitchell sits among the game’s long and storied history of clutch performers. Because the Rabbitohs No.1 has developed a fair habit of winning matches when a single, defining play is needed most.
“No-one [else] would have the cojones to try that,” Immortal Andrew Johns – himself a master of the match-winner – said on The Sunday Footy Show of Mitchell’s two-point field goal from the halfway line.
“We saw that pass to [Isaiah] Tass against the Chooks when he won [the game]. Once again, no-one would throw that ball.
“Any big moment – the pressure, the bigger moment, the bigger the stage – he stands up. He’s just a superstar.”
Mitchell’s two-point field goal was followed by a stone-cold stroll back to his mark and preceded with two stunning try-saving tackles on Payne Haas and Deine Mariner in either half. There was a one-on-one strip where back-rower Brendan Piakura was ragdolled out of possession and a cheeky full-time try where he played dead before plunging over the line.
Ice cold: Latrell Mitchell is mobbed by his teammates.Credit: Getty Images
High upon Mitchell’s big stage/big play CV; his 40-metre extra-time field goal against Melbourne in 2019. The flick pass that set up James Tedesco’s grand-final winning try six months later against the Raiders. The 2021 Origin opener in Townsville where he was Viv Richards with a Steeden, strutting, preening and manhandling hapless Queensland opponents all night. His return to the interstate arena last year for more of the same at the MCG.
Then of course, there are Mitchell’s two match-winners this season; sealing two of South Sydney’s most famous wins when his teammates were either hobbling or already watching on injured from the stands.
Only Penrith maestro Nathan Cleary compares to Mitchell among his contemporaries.
Johns, Darren Lockyer, Wally Lewis, Brad Fittler, Johnathan Thurston, Laurie Daley and Cooper Cronk are the other immediate clutch masters who spring to mind.
And as far as Mitchell’s strike that had everyone bar Bennett in an immediate lather, it is again an immediate hall-of-famer.
Benji Marshall and Chris Sandow have both kicked longer field goals – by all of one metre – in the past 15 years, but Andrew Willis’s 48-metre winner to sink Norths in 1996 has been the immediate reference point for most.
A relative unknown for the finals-bound Magpies, Willis’s wonderful nudge was his first and last top-flight field goal and he only played a 13 more first-grade games afterwards.
The Daily Telegraph took the Wests playmaker back to Campbelltown the next day to see if he could reprise the same shot with just a smidgen of the pressure on him.
Willis never got close, a marker of just how remarkable his first shot was. No such problems for Mitchell though – no matter how big the audience, or who’s in it.
