Danger game for Raiders against Bennett's bad Bunnies
By most markers, the flying Canberra Raiders should dispatch the enigmatic-at-best South Sydney Rabbitohs today. But our writer-man senses danger, even on a cold and wooly wet one at GIO Stadium.
And so to game day and the enigmatic Bun-buns of Redfern and region, and, for whatever reason, I fear these people.
I mean, we will beat them as we beat their arch-enemies the Roosters last weekend because we are, as you may be aware, sa-mokin’.
So sa-mokin’ that Sydney scribes and talking heads, many of whom remain scarred by seeing their breath as fog for the first time on primary school excursions to Old Parliament House and the War Memorial, have poked their heads above their laptops and asked of one another, and as much themselves: Can the Raiders actually win this?
Of course the answer is yes. Admittedly, many of us foresaw this Raiders squadron busting out in 2026, once so many of the babies reached 50, 75 games.
But hard to complain, right? Ricky Stuart has his people humming. They just seem very, very fit, as if pre-season training has imbued them with extra stuff. They compete on every play like Craig Bellamy’s Storm, and they do it from minutes one through 80. They are hard people.
And there’s depth. Dear, sweet depth. Because lose your number seven and number nine, both of whom have been - and I urge you to use the phrase, in Ray Warren’s voice, in conversation today - hot-form fulcrums of the Raiders’ charge to the 2025 Telstra Premiership, and still you beat the Roosters on their patch on a Sunday evening, how good was that, I was there and so was my boy Charlie and my mate Kev, it was joyous and glorious, amen.
But I still fear Souths today.
It is, in part, because we ride the crest of the wave and there is, one would assume, another loss to be etched on this team’s ledger before September. There surely has to be right? We’re going gangbusters - but the ‘62 Saints we are not. And no-one is. And they lost a few, too.
But also this: the Rabbitohs, despite modest returns in 2025 that we will detail in good time, remain my season’s crouching tiger, hidden dragon, something, something.
I think they make a run. And I think old man Benny has them primed to begin that run here, in our glorious nation’s capital, today, at GIO Stadium at 2pm.
Just the feels. And the feels have been good. For as I said to Kev at Allianz last Sunday night, we’ve got this. Doesn’t matter we’re down by 12, whatevs. We have got these people. We are better. We will win.
So the feels have been good thus far. And thus I half-fear Souths.
Look at ‘em: Alex Johnston has more tries than anyone bar the try-man of legend, Ken Irvine.
Campbell Graham, Cody Walker, he still feels like our own, Jack Wighton - we know these people. Know they are dangerous people.
Dangerous? Latrell Mitchell kicks two-point field goals from space, can flick-pass in mid-air in Origin, and can be harder to stop than political upheaval in Latin America.
The knock? It depends which Trell turns up. For every Super Trell there’s a Trell that looks like he’d rather be peeling prawns and playing guitar around a fire on his property up near Taree.
Regardless, there will be some cracking, super-competitive match-ups in the back division: Wighton vs Seb Kris. Campbell vs Matt Timoko. Savelio Tamale vs the under-rated Isaiah Tass.
Tamale? How about him? Didn’t the Dragons give up a hot one here.
Second in the competition for linebreaks (15) behind Jesse Arthurs (16). Third in the competition for tackle breaks (75) behind Herbie Farnworth (84). He’s strong and he’s good, and makes gains out of danger. I believe that we’ll keep him.
With Tamale, Kaeo Weekes and Xavier Savage on fire, the Raiders lead the league in kick return metres (2,421m) while the Rabbitohs are third-last (1,650m).
Ethan Strange will be throwing footwork at Walker, Weekes, first in the league for kick return metres (857), will be frightening lumbering forwards (and Trell from his prawn-peeling fantasia), and the returning Jamal Fogarty, first in the league for attacking kicks (100), will rain Steedens, cold, wet, high, wobbly, upon the Bunnies’ back-three, a simple tactic capable of inducing high-chaos, the best kind of chaos
Yet, as it has been since time immemorial, or 1908, it is in the forwards that we beat these people. You know who they are. The one-namers: Morgs, Taps, Horse, Simi. One of their number, Paps, today breaks the club’s games record. What a fellah, a veritable institution, a legacy man.
Elsewhere, Hudson Young’s 10 tries see him third on the try-scorer list behind Ryan Papenhuyzen (12). You needn’t consume all your Milk to know it: he is a ripper, Huddo, more competitive than fixed income bonds.
The whole footy squad is. Consider that, as a collective, backs and forwards, starters and bench, heading into this fixture with South Sydney Rabbitohs, the Canberra Raiders are:
First for tackle breaks (494) and the Rabbitohs are last (301).
First for post-contact metres (7,631m) and the Rabbitohs are fourth-last (6,357m).
Second for points (360) and the Rabbitohs are second-last (211).
Second for tries (62) and the Rabbitohs are second-last with (36).
Which is all, of course, to the good, and points to a genuine battle between premiership contender and pretender at GIO Stadium, the old girl once known as Bruce, this afternoon on a day that’s predicted to reach a high of nine degrees with a high chance of rain. One does not anticipate South Sydney people enjoying these conditions.
But stuff them, right? Because up the Milk!