Easter Sunday Slaughter: Raiders to rent Titans asunder by the banks of Mudgeeraba Creek
With Canberra Raiders flying and Gold Coast Titans typically meh, what other outcome can one predict than a massive rout, inflicted by the best offloaders and tackle breakers in the NRL
And so to Queensland and it’s so-called Gold Coast, a gaudy facsimile of a Florida strip mall with Burger Kings and Sizzlers and so many sad, ragged putt-putt golf facilities, a city-of-sorts where professional sports franchises go to atrophy and then die.
It is a Thing.
Consider: rugby league has had Seagulls, Giants, Gladiators, Chargers. The AFL installed Brisbane Bears in Carrara. Rugby invented East Coast Aces, which lasted one year. The A-League had a Gold Coast United (nee Galaxy) that Clive Palmer rooted. Basketball’s had Cougars, Rollers and Blaze. Baseball had the Daikyo Dolphins who spent four years in the Australian Baseball League.
And as locals prefer necking jelly shots from plastic sample jars in the Burleigh Heads Hotel to watching professional sports in the hinterland of Robina, the Gold Coast’s teams wither on the vine and suck money like Hoovers, and then become nowt but ephemera, memories, legends promulgated as the feral kid did the road warrior known only as “Max”.
And no-one gives two sweet fucks at all.
Why? Don’t know. Nobody does. The Goldie, even with a million people with a million kiddies all running about in perfect Strayan outdoor sunshine, fit as trout from nippers in the 8000 surf clubs, is a sinkhole for professional sporting teams. They could relocate Dallas Cowboys and Manchester United to Mermaid Waters, and the locals would still prefer eating onion rings in an Irish bar at Broadbeach Waters.
And yet … these Gold Coast Titans, for the first time since their forebears included Preston Campbell, Mat Rogers, Scott Prince and Luke Bailey, appear to have a bit about them. Not enough to trouble Canberra Raiders on Easter Sunday afternoon. But they go okay.
Their central powerhouse and spirit guide is Tino Fa'asuamaleaui, a mighty bull of a man with size and footwork and the haircut of a rogue Apache. There’s also an offload in Tino, indeed this year there have been seven.
But Canberra Raiders have four players who do the same thing, and better.
Corey Horsburgh has 14 offloads, Joe Tapine 11 offloads, Hudson Young eight offloads and Ata Mariota seven offloads. Offloading is the Canberra Raiders’ Thing. And when your speedy little ones are sniffing about for what league pundits call “second-phase play” but good teams just call “play”, that is … that is good.
It is good.
Big Tino is good, too, but Joey Taps and Corey Horse are as good or better, and have slightly different skill-sets, and Josh Papali'i and Mariota will tear off the bench and continue to plunder and inflict pain, and so will the recalled Zac Hosking, a very big in, though the revelation that is Matty Nicholson retains the starting No.12, they are beauts, I hope they scrap for the jumper like Glasgow streetkids.
Meanwhile, the Titans bench includes the poor man’s Payne Haas, Klese Haas, who looks no scarier than the new kid in Year 11 at Keebra Park State High School, and the poor man’s Tino Fa'asuamaleaui, Iszac Fa'asuamaleaui, sweet Jebus but there’s some vowels in these people, you would spend a lot of time enunciating letters with Vodafone’s helpdesk in Manila.
Regardless, we outpower them in the forwards, and out-skill them. And our backs are better and faster. Seb Kris has been smokin’. The kid winger, Savelio Tamale, runs hard and fine lines. He’s tough, quick. There’s a bit about him.
There’s a bit, also, about Preston’s boy Jayden Campbell, though Titans coach, the wily coyote Des Hasler, has him playing halfback when he’s clearly a six or a one, one supposes Hasler has to fit Campbell and five-eighth AJ Brimson in somewhere near the middle where the ball is going to be, because they don’t have other people to do this stuff.
Whatevs, Des. What. Ev. Ah.
For across the park, we will out-play, out-enthuse, and out-run the Gold Coast Titans. Do we not lead the entire National Rugby League competition for tackle breaks (Titans are 15th)? Do we not sit second behind Manly Sea Eagles (somehow) for post-contact metres, while the Titans are 13th? And in defence, the window to the soul, we have we not made 500 more tackles than Gold Coast Titans, most of them in the Manly game at Four Pines Park, The Night of The Ridiculous?
And the best numbers of all: Canberra Raiders 4th, Gold Coast Titans 12th, on the NRL ladder this Good Friday morning. Go, us.
And thus! With Hosking in, a fully-fit and full-strength squadron named 1-17, on a hot, dry and fast CBUS Super Stadium, a silly name for a stadium, by the banks of Mudgeeraba Creek, Canberra Raiders will slaughter Gold Coast Titans 36-16, get on while there is still time.
Also, if you would like a copy of The Milk, the book, with foreword by Laurie Daley, sign up as a paid subscriber to this bit of kit, and we’ll post one out to you, signed and personally inscribed, one can think of no more thoughtful gift for Mothers Day on May 11 just 23 days away.
Up the Milk.
