Big Papa's comin': Knights will say 'Ni' to Machine in the Hunter
They have big outs. We have big ins. It's all pointing to a Raiders 'W' this afternoon at McDonald Jones. This means very little, of course. And it'll be a big test of hard-won resilience
Game day. The best kind of day, outside Masters Monday, Anzac Day, the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley and a perch on the old wall of the Jigger Inn watching them come down the Road Hole on day four of the Open Championship at St Andrews. Probably few other days.
Still - bloody good day, game day, especially when your footy club, the mighty Green Machine, is heading to The Hunter and riding the glorious wave of a one-match winning streak and playing (and not ‘versing’, kids, never ‘versing’, it isn’t a word, stop it at once) wounded Newcastle Knights.
And yes: We should win and win well.
This, of course, means nothing, I wrote an entire book about the ‘enigmatic’ nature of our Green Machine, there’s been 22 years since Laurie Daley gave it away, the last of the golden, ‘Meninga Dynasty’, and since then they’ve been different cats season-to-season, month-to-month, match-to-match, half-to-half.
They’ve been flat-out kooks. You’d get more consistent rent from a meth-head.
But not these current people, it appears. They battle hard and consistently. Their defence is strong. As the great ‘Sticky’ Ricky Stuart said in his post-match presser last week, you earn a reputation for resilience and these people have.
But you have to keep earning it. And that means crushing the weak as much as muscling out Sharks.
The Knights aren’t weak though. The pack works hard. The hooker is under-rated. Fullback’s a pinball. Bradman Best runs like a little Brahman Bull. Dane Gagai has won Origin MVPs. Daniel Saifiti could scare children for Australia.
Daniel once looked at me at Knights training like he wanted to eat me. It was 35 degrees at their training track, about 10am, they’re playing ‘semi-opposed’ which is close to playing a game. I was on the sideline and Daniel came off and I sort of raised my chin and eyebrows to say hello, and the glare he gave me, Jebus! The glowering eyes, the mono-brow. The man should be in the movies with Matt Nable narrating: How about this bloke.
Mind you it could’ve been his twin brother Jacob Saifiti, who was sent off against Wests Tigers, and won’t be playing today, big out for them.
Because a big in for us, of course, is the Destroyer of Worlds Josh Papali’i. Massive in. They reckon he was close in round one. But they’ve given the old man’s calf time to fully sick heal, and he’ll be bouncing out and into the Knights who’ll say ‘Ni’.
Or something. But I like us. They’re missing Kayln Ponga. And depth on the bench amounts to Jack Johns’ moustache. And they were run over last week by Dolphins after scraping home against Tigers.
Milk by 18.
Up Milk.
And that’s enough for today. Grab the Daily Telegraph and The Australian (they’re newspapers, kids) tomorrow for a big match writeup by a promising young sportswriter.