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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.

Latrell Mitchell: the man everyone wants a piece of.Credit: Michael Howard

Now in his 10th 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.

Brisbane’s enigmatic Reece Walsh might still match Mitchell, 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........

© The Age