In the middle of the first game of the season, with a teammate lying on the ground injured after an illegal tackle, and the much-vaunted Storm buckling under a first-half siege from the Tigers, Luke Brooks shows why it’s impossible not to like him.
“While we’ve got a player down, I had four or five blokes want to come straight at me ... ” referee Chris Sutton says to him.
“Yeah, we’ve got five captains,” Brooks interjects, before calmly walking off smiling to himself.
So many people have chuckled at Luke Brooks and the Tigers for their finals drought, their penchant for running ninth, for churning through coaches, for naming a small platoon of captains and having as many home grounds, that the club’s most polarising player has been around long enough to see the funny side too.
But is the Brooks era at the Tigers worth continuing beyond a 10th season?
On Sunday, Brooks (fitness pending) will come face to face with the Knights, the club rumoured to have offered him an escape route out of the Tigers over summer. Here was the chance to be mentored by Andrew Johns and throw bullets to Kalyn Ponga.
Getting people to talk about Brooks on the record, and whether there was genuine interest for him to leave for Newcastle over summer, is almost more elusive than a Tigers finals appearance.
What is clear is this: once Mitchell Pearce had set his heart on an early release to the south of France, the Knights thought they could get Brooks. Senior Newcastle sources say as much privately, even with Brooks still having two years to run on his Tigers deal.
Brooks’ manager Stephen Moses looks after the clients of deregistered agent Isaac Moses. Their stable also includes Knights coach Adam O’Brien, whose attack consultant Johns has been a long-time Brooks admirer.
But one of Tim Sheens’ first points of business after arriving in the country as director of football at the Tigers was to dig his heels in and say Brooks, perhaps the NRL’s most polarising player, was going nowhere. It was a bold, and early, call.
The Tigers knew they were going to be without their best player, Adam Doueihi, for more than half the season, and besides they still had faith in Brooks, so they spurned a chance to claw back even more space in a healthy salary cap to stick by their No.7, on close to $900,000 per season.
On Friday, Stephen Moses would only go as far to say as Brooks has a contract at the Tigers until the end of 2023 and wouldn’t expand on the Newcastle links. A senior Tigers official said, “not once did he ever ask for a release”.
Brooks has said very little since about whether his head was turned by the prospect of working under the eighth Immortal, other than an interview with the Seven Network before round one when he said: “You sort of hear the stuff and you can get a bit frustrated, but you’ve just got to worry about what you can do.
“He [Johns] was probably the best player in the world, so it would have been good [to work with him], but I’m here at the Tigers ... and I’m excited about staying here.”
Before the Knights take on the Tigers, Johns points to a bevy of late-maturing NRL halfbacks for his reason why Brooks’ best days are still to come. Brooks, who will become a father later this year, won’t turn 28 until December.
“Adam Clune is a classic example as a late developer,” Johns says. “Then there’s Cody Walker, who bounced around a few clubs. Whether he matured physically or mentally, or he wasn’t in the right system, I’m not sure. But he gets to the Rabbitohs and he’s one of the best halves in the world. Jahrome Hughes is in the same boat.
“It would be a real shame to see Brooksy finish his career without playing finals or rep footy before he retires because he’s got all the tools to do it. Some players can go better in a different system with different players and coaches around them, but I think he’s still got so much to offer.”
There was a couple of hours in the middle of last season which encapsulates perfectly the Brooks conundrum at the Tigers.
In the first game since Tommy Raudonikis’ death, the Tigers asked Brooks to walk out after his teammates with the No.7 jersey, which was retired for the day. They could have asked anyone to do it, but wanted Brooks to. It was a poignant moment, even more so for the kid who wore the black and white jersey on his dazzling NRL debut as an 18-year-old against the Dragons at the SCG in 2013.
At full-time after narrowly going down to the Cowboys following an awful first-half showing, Brooks was asked to do a sideline interview for Fox Sports. Many players would have said no. As he fronted the cameras, onlookers said Brooks copped some of the most savage abuse they’d heard from his own fans, almost reducing him to tears in a corner of Leichhardt Oval.
Brooks still did the interview.
As one Tigers official says, “I don’t think I’ve seen a player cop as much as he does in all my time in rugby league”.
Sheens and Tigers coach Michael Maguire have landed blows in the transfer market, bringing hooker Api Koroisau and back-rower Isaiah Papali’i to the club next year. It can be argued they’re finally building a better squad around Brooks, which he has not had for years.
It was easy to watch Sean O’Sullivan step into Nathan Cleary’s shoes and look like a world-beater last week, but his job was behind a Panthers pack featuring James Fisher-Harris, Isaah Yeo and Koroisau. How would Brooks have gone in a game such as that for Penrith?
Maguire has also heard the scuttlebutt about his relationship with Brooks, and doesn’t devote any energy to it.
The signing of Jackson Hastings to play alongside Brooks in the halves – at least until Doueihi returns – is seen as an important one, not least of all because Hastings is the type of combative character who will stick up for a mate when the barbs are being fired.
“I want nothing more than for a bloke who puts himself on the line for the club, in training and games and everything that goes on, to have success,” Maguire says of Brooks. “When I arrived, he got straight behind what we were doing and I’ve really enjoyed coaching him. His work ethic is right up there with anyone I’ve coached.”
And there’s a case to say he’s easily in the top half of No.7s in the NRL.
Champion Data statistics for all halfbacks who have started more than 50 NRL games since 2017 shows Brooks averages as many tries and line breaks as Mitchell Moses, has more try assists than Adam Reynolds and matches Ben Hunt for line-break assists in a team which can’t make the finals.
Former NSW halfback Brett Kimmorley, who is now working in the Tigers system, says he only learnt the art of resilience later in his career. After throwing the infamous intercept for Matt Bowen’s winning try in a State of Origin match, Kimmorley said he was too scared to throw a long right-to-left pass for the rest of the season.
“I went 15 games without doing it,” Kimmorley says. “And I feel a little bit sorry for [Brooks] in some regards because he’s a heavily scrutinised player in the game. He can get raps when they go good, but he gets lots of criticism when they go bad. That would be hard to wear quite regularly. It’s an easy target to have a shot at him.
“But I really think his best is in front of him. When you get kicked from pillar to post, sometimes you don’t want to make a mistake because you know what’s going to happen. I think there’s so much more to come.”
And if it does, then maybe Brooks will be the one to have the last laugh ... whether he’s one of five captains or not.
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It's a good article. My take is Brooks problem is that he isn't a great player.
It's a good article. My take is Brooks problem is that he isn't a great player.
I agree. He’s a good player, has some good skills but also has some limitations that prevent him from consistently performing at that next level.
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Only time I have ever felt ashamed to be a Wests Tigers fan was that day at Leichhardt.. Firstly the display by the side in Tommy's Tribute game.. then the disgusting behaviour of some fans on the sideline..
It's funny Brooks gets blamed for our lack of success one could argue if it wasn't for Brooks Wests Tigers would have a draw full of spoons..
Only time I have ever felt ashamed to be a Wests Tigers fan was that day at Leichhardt.. Firstly the display by the side in Tommy's Tribute game.. then the disgusting behaviour of some fans on the sideline..
It's funny Brooks gets blamed for our lack of success one could argue if it wasn't for Brooks Wests Tigers would have a draw full of spoons..
I’m not condoning what the fans did, but that’s a real look into the frustration among us fans about the years of failure and mediocrity. Luke just copped it as he represents the years of disappointment.
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Brooks cops a lot of our frustrations. Personally, I think he is a very handy player but with a limited skill set (poor kicking game and no leadership qualities). If there was ever a player who would benefit from a change of scenery it’s him. We would all then complain about why we let him go.
Brooks cops a lot of our frustrations. Personally, I think he is a very handy player but with a limited skill set (poor kicking game and no leadership qualities). If there was ever a player who would benefit from a change of scenery it’s him. We would all then complain about why we let him go.
I agree he cops so much undeserved criticism and it was the same last week.He played a very good game and tackled like a demon covering his forwards.If you believe he has a poor kicking game he displayed nothing of that last week.His bombs were pinpoint as were the cross kicks to big Ken.Sure his goal kicking was bog average,but the general negativity surrounding his game defies belief.
For mine Brooks bashing has become an ego driven agenda for some,to the point where objectivity goes out the window and is clouded by subjectivity,disallowing the ability to give credit where credit is due.
@tiger-symmetry I disagree that it’s an ego driven argument. The bottom line is that he’s been poor the last two seasons and he’s on big money. Yes, he doesn’t deserve all of the blame because the teams defense has been horrible for two seasons but the halfback of the team shoulders a lot of the responsibility for the attack and this is where brooks really frustrated me as unless we’re playing an average team, he’s usually very quiet. The second warriors game last year is a prime example of this. The frustrating part for me is that the blame gets passed on to everyone except brooks when in actuality, he’s played with legends in Marshall and Farah and the best hooker in the world in Harry grant but he still hasn’t performed.
Brooks is a great 5/8
Drop Brooks in to the panthers team next to cleary or at the Roosters next to Kleary and he's a complete different player.
He needs a halfback that controls the game and let's Brooks to play what he's sees.
Hopefully Hastings provides that this year.
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It's a good article. My take is Brooks problem is that he isn't a great player.
I agree. He’s a good player, has some good skills but also has some limitations that prevent him from consistently performing at that next level.
He’s a good player under the right coaching (ie Cleary). But his biggest problem is he disappears in the big moments.
@declan I understand your frustrations and you articulate your criticisms well.I know he’s on good money(exactly how much,I don’t know,does anyone?),I agree with your criticism that he as a no.7 has to shoulder a degree of responsibility for the attack.Benji certainly had some rather low points,even Harry Grant had a couple of forgettable games when he was here,and agree he’s the best in the world.
But for mine the overarching issue has been our forward pack or lack thereof over the last seven or eight years.In that time we’ve never possessed a truly fearsome brutal pack.Piece meal,rag tag and improvised I reckon.Every successful halfback in the NRL has had the luxury of playing behind a great pack with dynamic bench players.I just don’t believe he’s had that,and that’s what you have to attribute Brooks’s unevenness to and therefore becoming something of a scapegoat.
I do believe though that we’re laying good foundations for that dynamic pack and believe that we will see a much more vibrant Luke Brooks with its advent.
Luke just copped it as he represents the years of disappointment.
I agree and it's wrong.
