Trent Robinson is sitting in his office in the Sydney Roosters’ newly-opened $10 million Nick Politis Centre of Excellence speaking candidly about the lessons one of the NRL’s most successful clubs of the past decade need to take out of last year.
A couple of doors down in a team meeting room there is a mini-replica of an NRL field painted on the floor accompanied by several boxes of numbered blocks tucked under a nearby table.
A decent size, it comes complete with in-goal areas and all the correct line markings where the Roosters can review games, workshop how they want to play and then get the blocks out to start the equivalent of NRL chess.