Grand Poo-Bah calls The Milk; Raiders were hideous - but far from done in '23
Yes, it's been bad the last few weeks. But so was it for the Sharks who've come good and the Cowboys who came good and have now gone bad. We are in this and swinging. Also: Milk called by club legend
A slightly surprising but no less welcome name popped up on the phone the other day that of one-time Grand Poo-bah of these our Canberra Raiders, John McIntyre.
Yes, the great J-Mac: Patron of the Raiders; Life Member, Chief Executive and Chairman of the club for many years after his dad Les kicked it all off; a Raiders man as green to the gills as Don Furner the first and a tree frog owned by Victor the Viking.
John rang to say he’d been cleaning out his garage and had come across some material around a benefit match for a Queanbeyan United Blues Old Boy called Wally Pola.
The name sparked John’s memory because in my book The Milk I’d misspelled Wally’s surname ‘Poia’ because that’s how it came across from a scan of a Canberra Times match report from 1932 when the Blues won the first Group 8 competition and John’s uncle George played with Wally, and Wally scored a try which, as you’ll read in a Milk extract below, “caused a sensation”.
Anyway, John suggested that the second coming of The Milk should correct the record and that next time I’m in Canberra we should drink beer and he would tell me further war stories, an invitation which for a sports writer, history book type and Raiders man is the stuff of one hundred per cent sweet golden bullion, I will tell you it for nothing.
The passage is at the end of this bit of kit.
But first: The Great Excoriation…
*
And so back home on Sunday to old mate Bruce for the Bulldogs and, well, you wonder does it matter.
Of course it matters. You watch these people run out in odd socks in a Moruya trial it matters.
But heck-fire – following that effete, shit-house, massively softcock, do-they-even-care, let’s go with massively softcock effort against Melbourne Storm down there, well, win or lose against the Bulldogs, is it like … so what?
Look, we’ll beat the Dogs. They’re more busted than the Möhne and Edersee dams which were breached by bouncing bombs in 1943 and which caused catastrophic flooding of the Ruhr valley and of villages in the Eder valley, it says so on the internet.
But last Sunday in Melbourne? Just head-shaking stuff.
I mean, Nelson Asafa-Solomona - 7 foot four, 185 kilograms, more rutting musk oxen than man - that guy had played 50 minutes of footy and his team was leading 36-2 when he desperately dived on the ball as five (5) Canberra Raiders players stood there looking at it.
And I thought then as I think now: It’s like there’s something wrong with them.
It’s like they’re afraid of being hurt. Their play is so tentative. It was the same against Newcastle two weeks ago – like it’s someone else’s turn to tackle that guy, jump on that ball, make that run from your 20.
Not all of them. But enough, Bubba. Enough.
Never seen a Raiders team like it. One that just … doesn’t have a go.
Pains me to type it.
Granted, these were but two standout games in a season of twice as many wins as losses, the vast majority absolute dog-and-cat fights.
And we’ve been proud of them this year. And I’m the proud owner of two cartons of Balter XPA after proving wrong a pair of nay-saying Sydney-siders with whom I co-exist.
Certainly the effort’s been there. All you can really ask.
Last couple weeks, not so much.
BUT! If you’re only as good as your last game, then a convincing win over the Dogs means we’re good, right? A win would mean a tilt at the Sharkies on their Briar Patch with muscle memory leaning to the confident.
And we can beat the Sharks as we can beat everyone. Consider: The Sharks are back in the hunt, apparently, after being written off less than three weeks ago by the same types who said the Cowboys were a-coming and that the Raiders are rightfully $125 for the premiership from fifth position on the NRL Premiership ladder.
But none of the prognostication matters. All the players and you by extension, dear reader, have to worry about is the next 80 minutes of footy. A loss doesn’t spell the end of the world (though one against the Dogs would likely end the season) just as a win doesn’t mean you’re charging at Penrith like berserkers.
And if we win the next two and Manly beat the Warriors and the Titans knock over Storm and the Dragons go mad and beat Storm and Warriors (yes, I know, a bigger ‘if’ than the Pyramids of Giza), then there you go, trend-setters: Top-4 spot and a double chance oh these our Canberra Raiders.
Dreaming? Of course. What else do we have? Only Panthers fans have expectation. The rest of us, everyone from Roosters to Broncos to Cowboys and back are predicting the same future, differentiated only by levels of pessimism.
Beat Dogs. Beat Sharks. Into finals on a roll.
Up the Milk.
*
From Chapter 2 of The Milk:
Following the poorly named ‘Great War’, the district’s first rugby league team formed in Hall and played one-off challenge matches against teams from Bungendore, Yass, Crookwell, Queanbeyan (the ‘Warrigals’) and the evocatively-named hamlet Grabben Gullen.
In 1927 they opened Parliament House, held a Canberra Show, and Hall beat Duntroon 11-2 in the final of the Territory and District League.
In 1932 there was a larger competition, Group 8, in which Queanbeyan United, the mighty ‘Blues’, won the first of 26 premierships, knocking over Canberra 13-nil in a game The Canberra Times declared was “hard but fast and at times rugged.”
Early in the second half a Blues man known only as ‘McIntyre’ – whom we know today was George McIntyre, a professional runner and the brother of 17-year-old reserve grader and future Raiders founding father Les – “caused a sensation” when, “right from the kick-off, he raced down the sideline and passed in field with [Wally] Pola waiting in support.”
The game then “developed its roughest play, and four players shaped up but were not caught by the referee,” reported The Times, which also praised Mr Fry of Sydney whose “crisp decisions and rigid commands freed the game from an element of roughness which was apparent occasionally in the second half.”
The crowd was reported as a “large gathering”, many of whom retired from the sidelines,. we can assume to the bar; Prohibition having ended four years earlier after a plebiscite, before there was an entertaining kicking duel.
The game also sported 26 penalties (shared 13-all) and 53 scrums with Blandon winning 32 of the scrums while Burke “raked the ball on 21 occasions.”
The gate takings amounted to 53 pounds, which was shared among and drunk by the victorious men of Queanbeyan United which, like Abe Simpson tying an onion to his belt, was the style of the times.