One last finals charge for two Roosters legends. Millie Elliott and Corban Baxter have confirmed 2026 will be their final season, and looking back at what they've built, through injuries, pregnancies and the earliest days of the NRLW, it's nothing short of remarkable. Now, unbeaten and staring down the finals, they're chasing one more premiership together before they go.
Baxter's story starts a long way from Allianz Stadium. A netball convert from the Sutherland Shire who had her first son, Carter, at 16, she went from spectator to Jillaroos representative inside twelve months once rugby league found her. Born in Auckland and raised in Sydney from age three, she has reconnected with her Māori heritage through two stints captaining the New Zealand Māori Ferns, added nine caps for New South Wales, and become a foundation figure of the Roosters' NRLW program since the competition launched in 2018. "The first few years of being a Rooster were pretty challenging. We really struggled to win games and definitely hadn't won a premiership in those first few years," Baxter recalled. "I'm really proud of the culture that we've built as a group. And I think the Roosters are going to be strong for a very long time because of that foundation that we've built."
Her defining moment came in 2021, when she became the first captain in Roosters NRLW history to lift a premiership trophy, a maiden title she still ranks among her proudest achievements, and one she has chased through 42 games, 13 tries and a 76 per cent career win rate as a one-club player. Head coach John Strange still points to that number: "For Corbs in particular, she's the first ever captain of this club in NRLW to lift the trophy. You know, that'll never change."
Elliott's journey has covered more ground. Born Millie Boyle in the tiny south-coast town of Cobargo into a rugby league family, her father David and uncle Jason Croker both played for Canberra, she made her name first in rugby union, debuting for the Wallaroos at 19 and serving as vice-captain at the 2017 World Cup, before switching codes in 2019. It proved a masterstroke: back-to-back titles with the foundation Brisbane Broncos, a maiden premiership captaining Newcastle in 2022, then a move to the Roosters in 2023 that yielded a fourth ring in the 2024 grand final win over Cronulla. Only Glenn Lazarus has previously won NRL premierships with three different clubs; Elliott is the only player, male or female, to have done it with three different women's sides.
She's been there long enough to measure the distance travelled: "We started with four teams, with four games. And I know people used to say it was a bit of a joke, but that's all we had. And we took it, and we did what we could. And the fact it is where it is now and to be part of that growth has been really special." It's a debt she's quick to trace further back, too: "We never thought that there was a possibility to play rugby league professionally growing up as kids and as teenagers even, the people that laid that platform before us, those people that were playing footy when they were selling their cars and selling raffle tickets to pay for their kit and trips away."
Motherhood runs through both careers. Baxter announced her second pregnancy in 2022 while working as a Sky Blues sideline aide, gave birth to son Beauden in January 2023, and was back in Roosters colours within four months, only to suffer an ACL injury in a 2024 trial match that brought the retired Sam Bremner out of retirement as her replacement. She fought back for 2025, starting at fullback in that year's grand final. Elliott's comeback has been even more compressed: after missing all of 2025 to have daughter Gigi in September that year, she returned to State of Origin just seven-and-a-half months postpartum, drawing inspiration from Olympic hurdler Jana Pittman and leaning on her mother Shelley and husband, Rabbitohs forward Adam Elliott, to make it work.
Watching Baxter do it first made it feel possible: "But also to have people like Corbs playing alongside, it's very special. She's bounced back from kids and come back to footy. And I was like, well, if she can do it, I can do it too. Like it just really opens your mind to what we can achieve as athletes." Motherhood is now a chapter Elliott is ready to step fully into: "I've called my time on being an athlete. I want to be a mom and continue having kids and, you know, start that next journey. So I really want to be all in, on being a mother and this next chapter"
For Baxter, it's the small moments that stick and family is everything: "Carter’s (her son) been on the sidelines cheering me on, I've been on his sideline cheering him on. And that's been a really unique and special experience for me." Elliott feels it too, every time she brings her own kids to the football: "Gigi’s travelled to the Gold Coast and screamed the whole way on the flight. It's a memory I remember doing that with my dad. I get to look back on the photos and the footage of being there at the games. It's pretty cool that we get to do that for our little ones."
Both have built lives well beyond the field too. Baxter co-founded CK Athletic Development to mentor young athletes and has become a regular on Fox League's NRLW panel; Elliott co-founded Trainer Group, a disability services provider she has prioritised even at cost to her playing career, she once withdrew from a Jillaroos World Cup squad to focus on the business, and has sat on Channel 9's Wide World of Sports commentary team since 2023. Baxter said. “ It's just amazing that we have so many opportunities throughout our playing career and we've been able to dip our feet in them."
This season, both have been statistically irresistible. Across 11 games apiece, Baxter has racked up three tries, eight try assists and 989 running metres from fullback, while Elliott has been the engine room personified: 231 tackles at better than 95 per cent efficiency and 1,432 running metres, an average of 130 a game. Those numbers have underpinned an unbeaten 11-0 season that has again delivered the Roosters the minor premiership and, with it, a bye straight into the semi-finals.
Strip away the club colours and the two careers mirror each other point for point: foundation-era players who carried the NRLW from its infancy to a fully professional competition, premiership winners who returned to the top level within months of childbirth, and two of the most respected voices on broadcast television in the women's space. Head coach John Strange watched the decision take shape up close: "They both came to me at different times during the year; it's obviously been difficult for both of them because they're both playing great footy. So the decision they've made is purely for other people, like their family." What they leave behind matters just as much to him: "The influence that Millie has, not just on the field, just around training, it's been invaluable for the younger girls, they come through our pathways, they get to see how Millie prepares to train. That's something that, as a coach, as I said, is invaluable." When you put this jersey on, you're a Rooster for life. But the fact that they're etched in history as premiership winners is really special," Strange added. "So the legacy that they both leave is really special."
Their places in the game's history are already secure. What they're chasing now is one last premiership, together, before they go.
