Blues face nervous wait after back injury rules Latrell out of Sharks clash

NSW Blues officials have been left sweating after gun centre Latrell Mitchell was ruled out of South Sydney’s clash against Cronulla on Saturday with a back injury.

With teams for the first Origin clash to be named on Monday week, Mitchell’s name mysteriously dropped off the Rabbitohs team list on the official NRL website on Thursday. Namesake Latrell Siegwalt is set to replace Mitchell and make his NRL debut against the Sharks.

Souths officials were caught off guard by the NRL publishing what was a significant team change before they could announce it themselves.

Mitchell was on Thursday undergoing scans for a back injury suffered in Sunday’s game against Newcastle.

The issue is expected to sideline him one to two weeks. If fit, Mitchell would be one of the few automatic picks for Blues coach Laurie Daley given his form at left centre.

Mitchell fronted the media for the first time in more than 18 months at the start of the week, to help promote Campbell Graham’s 150th game at Accor Stadium.

He has been at his rampaging best, and scored one of the tries of the year when he ran over the top of Newcastle captain Kalyn Ponga on Sunday. He stayed down after that effort, and again when needing to be stopped by five Knights defenders on one of the last plays of the game.

“‘KP’ [Ponga] threw the kitchen sink at me,” Mitchell said of his try. “I thought, ‘You know what, here it is, there’s an opportunity’. He threw everything at me. I felt it when I was on the ground.”

Mitchell’s withdrawal will be welcome news for Cronulla, who will celebrate Nicho Hynes’ 100th game for the club on Saturday. Hynes is one of Mitchell’s good friends and said he was delighted Mitchell finally felt comfortable enough to speak publicly again.

“On the flipside it was pretty sad to see he had to take time away from it [media] because of what people were saying, and how people were treating him,” Hynes told this masthead.

“You never want to see anyone in this space be treated the way he’s been treated, in particular a proud First Nations man who stands up for what he believes in.

“He’s been a big leader in that space with the All Stars crew few the last few years. It’s nice he has his confidence back and believes in himself enough to do [talk publicly] again.

“You never know what people are going through mentally. Maybe that’s why he took that break. Good on him. You want to see our best players playing their best footy, and he’s doing that. He just looks happy.”

Hynes is in his fifth season at the Shire club, and said the milestone was a nice way to repay them for standing by him during a wild ride – which has seen him picked, and later dropped, from the NSW and Australian squads. He made a point of thanking coach Craig Fitzgibbon, and confirmed his post-career hopes of becoming a coach.

“I’ve grown up [in five years], the club has seen me at my youngest self when I first came on to the scene,” Hynes said. “I was loving footy, being around it, frothing it, going out and having a good time, partying with my mates.

“I’ve played rep footy, been dropped from rep footy, then I found the girl [Piper] I’ve chosen to marry, and hopefully have kids with one day.

“This club has ridden the wave with me, they’ve been enormous, particularly off the field. It’s really nice to repay the faith they’ve shown me by racking up this game.”

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