The Roosters love a shiny, million-dollar back-rower. This is why they don’t need one

In a Roosters hall of fame, the back-rowers have their very own corridor – where names like Cordner, Ricketson, Fitzgibbon, Aubusson and Sonny Bill Williams from this century alone loom large.

Penrith’s Liam Martin – who has paused contract talks until after the season – has his fans among Tricolours heavy hitters .

Subtle enquiries were made about Jacob Preston before he resigned with Canterbury. And David Fifita, of course, was signed and sealed with the club on a $3.3 million, four-year deal in 2024 ... until he wasn’t .

But rugby-bound back-row mainstay Angus Crichton says there is no need for the Tricolours to look to the market. Their future is right here, right now.

“Siua [Wong] and Salesi [Foketi], they’ve got such a big future ahead of them,” Crichton says. “The club can do what they want in the front office, obviously. But both those guys, I feel, have put their hands up to claim their edge spots for a long time.”

Crichton himself has put his broken foot on the line – after a three-month recovery – to play a 30-minute “kamikaze” role off Trent Robinson’s bench against the Sharks and Dolphins in Friday’s grand final qualifier.

Foketi, once a 120-kilogram, teenage five-eighth, has enjoyed a break-out campaign and made Crichton’s left-edge enforcer role his own at Robinson’s urging.

“Robbo sat me down and said, ‘We want you to play on the left edge. You haven’t really been allowed to express yourself doing those 15-minute stints’,” Foketi says.

“He basically just said, ‘I want you to go out there and have fun and just be yourself’. That gave me a lot of confidence.”

Crichton has watched the rise of both Foketi and Wong for several years and from the stands for the past 12 weeks. And he couldn’t be happier for either of them.

What he sees in Foketi – the south Auckland-raised wrecking ball – is particularly poignant.

“As soon as he got here, he’s just been a good person with good, strong values,” Crichton says. “A lot of people come into this sport looking for money, accolades or fame, the wrong sort of things. Salesi is just the complete opposite. He’s just all values first and foremost, and then he’s a great footballer on top of it.”

After bursting onto the scene in 2023, his sophomore year included stints in reserve grade, and the Fijian international believes he will “probably always” be working out exactly how Robinson wants his back-rowers fitting into his game plans.

“There’s a lot of little things for me with our edge play in the Roosters system, especially in defence,” Wong says.