OPINION
Two minutes into the Roosters' grand final post-game press conference, Roosters coach Trent Robinson dropped the bomb.
Flanked by his senior stars Jake Friend, Luke Keary and Cooper Cronk, staring down the barrel of 10 television cameras, surrounded by around 30 reporters and NRL officials, Robinson didn't even flinch as he shamelessly admitted to an entire week of lies.
That's not even the most disappointing part of the 2018 premiers' web of deceit.
Robinson's admission after the game that his team had deliberately lied all through the week about Cronk's shoulder injury is a new low in the game's overt disrespect to its most important stakeholder — the fans.
Robinson revealed after the game that Cooper Cronk's broken shoulder blade injury was shared with his entire playing group the day after their preliminary final win over South Sydney last week — a full week before last night's grand final triumph.
However, in one of the great NRL ruses, the club announced Cronk had suffered a torn rotator cuff in his left shoulder — an injury much less significant and much less painful — in a deceitful attempt to confuse their Melbourne rivals.
It wasn't an omission of truth. It wasn't a grey area. It was a lie. A whopper as big as they come.
The Roosters team doctor Ameer Ibrahim said after the game that Cronk's injury — which required four painkilling injections — is more commonly seen in car crash victims.
Robinson said his team deliberately cooked up the story of Cronk struggling to recover from a torn rotator cuff to throw the Storm off the scent.
It was a complete fabrication, and one that fans, both casual supporters and Roosters fanatics, had to swallow the entire week.
Tragically, rather than be shouted down for his lies, there were giggles heard behind the cameras when the Roosters' dual premiership-winning coach admitted he'd lied through his teeth all week.
Asked if he had seen a braver performance than the one Cronk delivered on the biggest stage, Robinson declared: "Never.
"I've seen guys get injured in games, but I haven't seen a guy fracture his scapula, complete break through the scapula, play 60 minutes with it, and then have to deal with it all week, have four different lots of injections during the week."
Robinson said he'd never seen a player mentally stronger than Cronk.
"It's legend status in our game, that. And it's not an understatement," he said.
"And we got to witness it. Honestly, I was observing every day and to watch a man go through that was awesome."
The coach revealed the club intentionally chose not to disclose the exact nature of its star player's fractured scapula, instead opting to say he had a severe rotator cuff injury.
"We were really honest: not with you guys (the media), but the players," he said.
"We knew that the rotator cuff was good for us to have.
"If we said it was a fractured scapula, it was pretty obvious that he either wasn't going to play and it wasn't gradings, whereas the rotator cuff was a certain range.
"So we said, 'We're going to say it's a rotator cuff so people don't know, but this is exactly what's happened to Cooper and this is what it's going to take."
With Cronk playing, the lie ultimately served no purpose. It wasn't to protect the player named to play at halfback — utility Mitchell Aubusson. It wasn't to stop the Storm preparing strategies to expose whichever player did slot in at halfback.
In the end it was a lie just to keep the Storm confused. Storm coach Craig Bellamy, arguably the game's greatest coach right now, already had his plans to target Cronk's shoulder. In that sense, the lie served no purpose.
Robinson said every player knew as early as last Sunday that Cronk had a broken bone.
Every player.
Roosters players conducted hundreds of interviews during the week where they were asked about Cronk's famed shoulder. None of them told the truth. Hundreds of interviews, hundreds of lies.
As soon as the club went specific with details of a claimed torn rotator cuff it was no longer a small fib. It was an out-and-out lie and it was the casual nature of Robinson's post-game admission that is most shocking.
Robinson has long been praised as a true rugby league statesman that has made his sport's reputation one of the bricks his playing group is built on.
He worked tirelessly to improve the game in his previous work on the NRL's competition committee.
But in this instance he's responsible for a new low in the fractured relationship between fans and their clubs.
Cronk also showed no discomfort at all when discussing how his team was able to keep his broken scapula secret during the week.
He stepped up at his press conference last week after their win over the Rabbitohs with his arm in a sling. He joked in his post-game press conference about his mindset heading into that pre-game media opportunity and how he was best going to be able to lie about his injury.
The lack of respect for fans surrounding NRL team announcements has been an ongoing issue for the game in recent years.
There have been public calls for the NRL to introduce a fines system similar to the NFL to stop clubs pulling 11th hour team selection changes that leave fans in the dark.
The game was left red-faced when Billy Slater was ruled out of the State of Origin series opener earlier this year just hours after Queensland coach Kevin Walters declared Slater had been cleared to play. More lies.
Then, the NRL made a song and dance about sending an email to the QRL and NSWRL to ask for more transparency around team selections, but in the end it was just another case of lies going unchallenged.
With betting agencies now more entrenched in the sport than any time before there have been widespread calls for team selection information to be made more transparent.
The Roosters' shameful week shows the NRL's recent work to limit the lies told by clubs has been a bandaid for a bullet wound.
The NRL overhauled its team selection system recently to force clubs to cut their team lists back to just 19 players 24 hours before kick-off.
Clearly it is not enough.
The Roosters' ability to keep Cronk's injury in-house in a sport famous for leaking more information than the government's back bench is being celebrated as the clearest example of the extraordinary harmony and respect within the Roosters' dressing room.
That respect doesn't extend to the fans — and their lies should be seen for what they are — a blight on the game.