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Champion halves love Sam Walker, the same way they like a banana kick or a soon-to-be prostrate prop lumbering in vain on the inside.
Andrew Johns wants Walker to be handed the keys to the Roosters attack and to “play on the ball like a 90s halfback”.
Club consultant Cooper Cronk urged Trent Robinson not to drop Walker in April, despite suggestions of angst around clashing playmaking philosophies.
Benji Marshall, coaching the Tigers in everything but title this weekend, loves the “lost art” he sees in Walker and expects a point to be proved in Saturday’s clash.
Robinson, too. To a point, anyway.
“It’s time to get Sammy back in with Luke [Keary], let them play their natural game,” the Roosters coach said ahead of Walker’s first NRL game after four months sidelined by injury.
Sam Walker returns against Wests Tigers on Saturday.Credit: NRL Photos
“[Walker’s] role is as halfback of the Roosters. Do his job and then express himself in his way.”
Walker’s flair is what attracts fans, former stars and Robinson alike. Early in his 2021 breakout season, Matty Johns marvelled at Walker’s fearlessness: “Those long passes you would throw without thought when you were 18, that you start to hold back when you’re 28 because you remember back to the day Ryan Girdler picked you off with two intercepts.”
The fun part for Walker and Robinson is balancing that prized playmaking trait – not unteachable, but not far off – with the first scars of the 21-year-old’s career.
A year of intense public scrutiny and a learning curve that, because of numerous false starts and fears of serious ACL damage, had to be navigated away from Walker’s preferred classroom.
“Time off is often a good thing for players at a young age,” Robinson says. “Usually it comes in an off-season. When you can take one or two steps back and observe, there is some growth that can happen and I feel like that’s happened with Sam.
“It wasn’t, ‘You need to improve your speed’ or ‘You need to improve your kicking’. It was just the maturity as a half in the game. So playing would be the ideal way to do that. But also taking a step back and observing is another way to do it.”
Just to get those former champion playmakers cartwheeling, neither Walker nor Keary will be pegged to the left or right side of the field.
“We’re not as stuck on left and right as some of the modern teams are,” Robinson says. “We like our guys to interchange sides at different times and move around the field.
“I feel like that’s natural for both of those guys as well. They naturally have their sides, but they are allowed to move wherever they want to move to. It suits both of them in that style.”
Sam Walker’s first NRL stumble sent him back to reserve grade and Glebe’s Wentworth Park.Credit: James Alcock
The big question though comes just as the Roosters – this year’s single biggest puzzle – look like they’re finally starting to sort themselves out.
Can Walker’s fearless, flighty playmaking still fit into an attack that after floundering all year, is finally showing signs of life?
James Tedesco will be absent this weekend through concussion protocols and replaced at fullback by Joey Manu, but is on track to return Friday week for a likely winner-takes-all rumble with the Rabbitohs.
Champion Data figures show the resurgence of Tedesco and the Roosters in the past five weeks has come with their talismanic skipper touching the ball less – 25 times a game – but threatening far more as he lurks wider more often, not unlike Kalyn Ponga at Newcastle.
Robinson also acknowledges Brandon Smith is still warming to his role conducting the Roosters ruck.
Smith’s own lengthy mid-year lay-off has Robinson still working out when and how to best use his $800,000 hooker – to the point his minutes alternate between 32 one week and 67 the next.
“I thought his best game was [his] last game,” Robinson says after Smith shone against Parramatta.
“We’ve had some good discussions and I really like how hard he’s working. There’s a little bit of the natural game that came out and a little bit of the responsibility on time that he played.”
Underestimated amid the Roosters’ attacking struggles have been their edge back-rowers, who have managed just 11 combined line breaks this season compared to 18 in 2022.
The long-term absences of Angus Crichton, in doubt this week with a lingering knee issue, and Sitili Tupouniua (gone for the year with a bulging disc in his neck) have seen the workhorse Butcher brothers and Victor Radley employed out wide.
All of which brings us back to Walker. Curiosity and expectation go hand-in-hand this weekend, remembering that this is still a 21-year-old back from his first NRL axing and first major injury for his first game in four months.
Still, there’s a reason all those champion playmakers love what they see in Walker. Who’s to say a scar or two won’t be the making of him?
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