In 2025, the Sydney Roosters were written off before the season began. They’d lost Craig Bellamy’s cultural fingerprints — scratch that, they never had those — but they had lost Joseph Manu, Sitili Tupouniua, and a cluster of experienced campaigners who had been the backbone of previous finals campaigns. Sam Walker spent much of the year injured. The halves combination was stitched together from parts. Critics called it a rebuilding year and were politely surprised when the Roosters scraped into eighth place.
Having lost so much experience at the end of 2024, the Roosters needed captain James Tedesco to stand tall and return to his best — and the situation brought out the best in him, as he stormed to the Dally M Medal by a record 22 votes, as well as claiming the Captain of the Year award.
The rebuild was faster than anyone expected. The core held. And then Trent Robinson went to work.
After exceeding expectations with a ninth consecutive top eight finish in 2025, the Sydney Roosters raised the bar and are once again right in the mix as a popular pre-season pick to win the premiership in 2026.
Not just surviving. Contending. Genuinely, credibly contending.
The Spine That Changes Everything
Every great Roosters team in the Robinson era has been built around a world-class spine. Cooper Cronk and Jake Friend. Luke Keary and Sam Verrills. The formula has never changed — brilliant playmakers, composed leadership, and a hooker who controls the tempo like a conductor.
The 2026 version might be the most star-studded yet.
Reigning Dally M Medallist James Tedesco leads a star-studded backline, with Cherry-Evans set to slot in alongside Walker in what shapes as one of the most exciting halves combinations the competition has seen. Walker — back for a full season after missing much of 2025 through injury — brings the electricity. Cherry-Evans brings something harder to manufacture: composure under pressure, the memory of a thousand big moments, and a finishing instinct in close games that borders on supernatural.
Cherry-Evans has scored the winning points in Golden Point seven times in his career — no other player has achieved the feat more than four times.
Put that next to Walker’s brilliance and Tedesco’s leadership, and you have a spine that can win you games you have no right winning. That matters more as the season goes on and the margins tighten.
The Numbers That Demand Respect
Four wins on the trot. An attack led by Sam Walker and Daly Cherry-Evans has scored 167 points in the past month to showcase their title credentials.
That is not a purple patch. That is a statement. That is a team that has found its rhythm and is playing the kind of football that makes opposition coaches lose sleep on Thursday nights.
Mark Nawaqanitawase is an excitement machine who can produce a try out of nowhere — and he’s been doing exactly that, racking up eight tries in his last five games at Allianz Stadium. Daniel Tupou, ageing as gracefully as any winger in the history of the competition, sits one try away from joining Billy Slater in third place on the all-time NRL tryscoring list. Angus Crichton and Victor Radley are causing chaos in the middle. Spencer Leniu is doing things at prop that shouldn’t be physically possible.
This team is firing on every single cylinder.
The Brotherhood in the Picture
But go back to the photo.
Because statistics explain performance. They don’t explain culture. They don’t explain why certain teams get better in finals football while others tighten up and go backwards. They don’t explain that particular quality — call it cohesion, call it trust, call it genuine affection between men who have chosen to be in the trenches together — that separates the good teams from the great ones.
The Sydney Roosters have always had it. Under Robinson, it has never been accidental. It has been deliberately, painstakingly constructed — through preseason camps, through shared suffering, through the kind of environments that build real relationships rather than transactional ones.
The smiles in that photograph are not manufactured. The comfort is real. These are men who have been through the hard parts together — the injuries, the losses, the near-misses, the rebuilding years — and have come out the other side still choosing each other.
That collage tells three different stories in three panels. The top photo: the aftermath of celebration, jerseys still on, cold drinks in hand, completely in the moment. The bottom left: young players huddled together mid-game, the intensity of competition written on every face. The bottom right: that iconic promotional image — three players, jaws set, eyes wide, the look of a team that has decided it is coming for something.
It is the look of a club that knows what it is and what it wants.
The Road Ahead
The Roosters know the next month defines their season. Reece Walsh and the Brisbane Broncos arrive at Allianz Stadium this Saturday night — the returning champion’s fullback, the Clive Churchill Medallist, fresh from three weeks out with a fractured cheekbone, arriving in form and ready to prove he’s the best in the game.
After that, the schedule doesn’t ease. State of Origin will drain squads across the competition. Finals positioning will be fought for bitterly. The Roosters’ defence — which conceded 21.7 points per game in 2025, the worst of any finals team — will need to prove it has genuinely improved.
There’s no question the Roosters were one of the hottest teams in the competition at the business end of last season — and a couple of experienced signings in the spine will likely go a long way to avoiding a similar finals flameout.
They have the attack. They have the spine. Cherry-Evans and Walker have the luxury of playing behind one of the biggest packs in the competition, with Spencer Leniu and Lindsay Collins leading the way up front — throw in Naufahu Whyte, Angus Crichton, Victor Radley and Siua Wong, and the Roosters will look to dominate teams up front.
They have the culture. They have the coach. They have the players who’ve been through difficult years together and come out the other side still smiling.
Why This Time Feels Different
Seven years is a long time between premierships for a club of the Roosters’ stature. 2019 was the last time they lifted the trophy — and in the years since, they have been close enough to taste it without quite delivering.
This group feels different. Not because the talent is necessarily greater than previous years — though it might be — but because of what is in that photograph. The ease. The comfort. The team that has been forged through the hard parts and emerged with something most clubs spend decades trying to manufacture.
Great teams are built on talent. But they are sustained by brotherhood.
Take one more look at that picture.
That’s not a team going through the motions. That’s not a squad of individuals wearing the same jumper and calling it a team.
That is the Sydney Roosters in 2026.
And they are coming.
