Isa, the 37-year-old Samoan icon who achieved legendary status with Wigan Warriors, was appointed as the club’s player support and development officer in February 2025. Despite coming from a different sporting code, his impact on the atmosphere at Cobham has been instantaneous. Isa\u2019s transition to football follows a career-ending injury in 2024, where a fractured fibula and dislocated ankle sidelined him during Wigan’s trophy-winning run. The practice of the huddle, often considered the brainchild of those with backgrounds in rugby league where collective focus is paramount, has become a staple of Chelsea’s matchday routine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat comes from unity,\u201d Rosenior told BBC\u2019s Match of the Day a week ago. \u201cThat comes from the players. It doesn\u2019t come from me. As their manager, it makes me really proud to see. They\u2019ve taken a lot of message on board from not just myself, but from the staff. Willie Isa is a top man and he\u2019s from rugby, he\u2019s from New Zealand, and he\u2019s spoken a lot about our togetherness and the players have taken it on board.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isa, the 37-year-old Samoan icon who achieved legendary status with Wigan Warriors, was appointed as the club’s player…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,6187,212360,1614,760,85],"class_list":["post-542231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chelsea","tag-l-rosenior","tag-premier-league","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}