Get Shorty, bust Dreamboat: Game Plan revealed ahead of Rabbitohs match in Sydney
Well, it's not revealed. It's not the one Ricky Stuart's giving anybody. It's actually, er, my game plan. But it's brutal. It's simple. And it'll work at Accor Stadium on Saturday night.
I WATCHED THE 1991 grand final in the downstairs bar at Raiders Club in Mawson and it was clear in the second half that the Raiders would lose.
Penrith monsters Paul Dunn, Mark Geyer, Paul ‘Nobby’ Clarke and Brad Izzard were fairly hurling themselves at the Canberra line again and again.
Greg Alexander’s kicking pinned the Raiders like bugs in their dead ball.
And when Canberra did have the Steeden, Ricky Stuart and Laurie Daley were so busted they couldn’t kick it far enough away.
Stuart’s groin was off the bone. He shouldn’t have played. He couldn’t train.
Before each match he’d get a needle in his groin. At half-time he’d get another one.
“You could hear the screams coming from the doctor’s room,” Mal Meninga said on the Queenslanders Only television program.
Stuart had had groin surgery after the 1990 Kangaroo Tour but it hadn’t worked. He and coach Tim Sheens headed to Sydney on a secret mission to see a specialist.
The doctor told the pair that Stuart could have surgery and sit out the season or play every game with a needle – one before the match and one at half-time.
The doctor added that the needles would hurt. A lot.
Sheens told the doctor that he wanted to get the injection, too, to see how bad the pain was because he was concerned for Stuart, according to Stuart in Rugby League Week.
“The doc said, ‘Ethically, I can’t do that, but if you insist, I will. So I went first … he whipped out this massive needle and it felt like someone had stabbed me in the nuts with a screwdriver.
“Tim saw the look on my face and said, ‘Well, doc, if it’s unethical I don’t want you to risk your career’ and he wimped out … I still give him a hard time about that,” Stuart said.
So yes, pretty tough bit of kit, our Stick.
As is centre Campbell Graham who has been going into games for South Sydney Rabbitohs, and playing houses down, with needles in his sternum in order to play. He also gets them so he can train. We can under-estimate the sacrifices of these people who deliver our weekly entertainments.
Regardless, Graham’s mid-section must be Priority One for the Raiders left-edge at Accor Stadium on Saturday night - lookin’ at you, Albert Hopoate - who need to race in and shoot their shoulders upwards and into Graham’s midsection, channelling Manly hit-man Jorge Taufua.
And then, when it’s our turn with the footy, we must send all the big people - Josh Papali’i, Joe Tapine, Pasami Saulo, Emre Guler, Ata Mariota and the big-steppin’ Jack Wighton - just flat out directly at Campbell Graham.
See how numb he is.
Harsh? Rugby league can be a simple, brutal affair. And governed by Law of the Jungle: If you’re out there, you’re meat. Even if you are a tough prick, and a bit of dream boat.
Elsewhere our Canberra Raiders need fear, truly fear, like whatever was in the TV in in Amityville Horror, one man: Cody Walker, who’ll captain the Rabbits and frighten our people for his capacity to shred NRL D-lines. He’s just very, very good, Mr Walker, and someone, thinking Wighton, thinking Corey Harawira-Naera, thinking flame-haired passion-player Corey Horsburgh, - definitely needs to get in his face, get him tetchy, get him off the field and in the bin.
Law of the Jungle, etc.
There should also be a good battle between the Maroons-miffed and hopefully fired-up Horsburgh and the returning Bunny Man Keaon Koloamatangia who also had Origin aspiration.
Fancy Red in that one. And fancy us across the park. Yes, it’s their home ground. But it’ll be a touch dewy and a touch chilly, and we’re very used to that. And all week Stuart will have been reminding our people that while they played poorly against Manly Sea Eagles, they were only not in it for 80 minutes because the referees turned in poor ones.
True fact.
Raiders by 7.
Up the Milk.