Here come the hot steppers: Strange and Timoko to scorch earth at Bruce
Forget the Cronulla game as Manly forgot Wollongong. On the back of rampant forwards and Jamal Fogarty's deadly kicking, expect the Raiders spark-footed backs to make hay among the eucalypts.
And so to Game Day, the best kind of day, at home among the eucalypts at the stadia we once called ‘Bruce’ like it was our mate.
Zac Hosking is out, Simi Sasagi is in, on debut, the latest from the Raiders’ Newcastle man-factory, I’m going to call him ‘Dim’.
Must go okay, our man Sasagi, because Trey Mooney’s on the bench of the bench, and he’s a belter, Trey Mooney. The Raiders have a few, there is good depth in big units.
How to explain, then, last week and the Sharks? Don’t bother, just go with shit-house.
What do you say? So much dropped ball in so many zones of attack. You give Woden Valley Rams that much ball, they’ll put points on you. The Sharks just played footy with all the footy, and there was sunshine down the Shire, like the meek it’s nice they’re getting something, they’ve had a heck of a time since Scott Morrison of Bronte stopped being their number one ticket-holder, it’s a wonder they didn’t close the club for grief.
Suffice to say Ethan Strange scored a try and so did Joseph Tapine, and the enigmatic figures in the bunker found knock-ons where they have not existed in the 100 years prior to there being a bunker, you wonder has technology made things better, I’m going with no.
Strange’s one, particularly, in real time was how you score a try in traffic.
But so many actual knock-ons was what broke the Machine, let us never speak of it again.
Suffice to say … Manly Sea Eagles did much worse against St George Illawarra Dragons in Wollongong, and Manly Sea Eagles just belted Penrith Panthers, the testing material.
Naturally, in the ways of perception and Accepted Wisdom, Manly dropping all the footy is considered an aberration while Canberra doing it is considered evidence Canberra is no good.
They don’t rate us. It is a Thing. And It can be used against Them, bookies included, who’ve suggested Parramatta Eels, without Mitchell Moses, are a $2.08 coin toss from beating Canberra Raiders at home on a Sunday night.
But top level pro rugby league is a simple, if brutal affair: hold the ball, complete sets, kick and chase like devil dogs, and your runners will put enough pressure on opponents and they will crack. Fact. They have no choice. They can’t hold you out, as the game’s best team Penrith Panthers could not hold out Manly Sea Eagles, nor Sea Eagles hold out the game’s equal-worst team, St George Illawarra Dragons.
This day tonight at old mate Bruce, the weather forecast is for no rain from 2pm and thus a relatively firm and fast ground, which suits two fellows: Strange and Matt Timoko. Get these hot-footed chunksters close enough to the line and they can bedazzle.
Maybe not bedazzle. It’s footy not Bewitched the hit show from 1964 starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York and Agnes Moorehead as ‘Endora’.
But Strange and Timoko are dangerous people.
Jamal Fogarty’s kicking game, will, of course, be key, again, comma, in taking advantage of the mighty yards and field position gifted him by Tapine, Josh Papalii and Pasami Saulo, and Ata Mariota who’s starting in the 12.
Again, you’d back the Raiders big units against anyone’s, Panthers power-houses included.
Danny Levi’s been wiggling his way under the sticks for tries, and the Eels will be alert to his dummy-half darts, which means a quick shift with sufficient body language lies and there could be profit for rampaging Papalii or Tapine or Saulo, or even Mariota who’s scored one try in 20 games.
It’s wider on the fringes that the Raiders must improve and that includes Hudson Young whose hands let him down against the Sharks. But he’s a beauty, Hudson Young, and one swallow of whatever that stuff Big Terry sells on the ads does not a summer make.
And Ricky Stuart knows how to get in the heads of combustible types, so expect Young and Corey Horsburgh to rip and tear like sunbaking bikies who find cocaine bricks washed up on Broulee Beach.
Them? The Eels? Good side. The kid in the six, Blaize Talagi, has a bit about him, and Dylan Brown and Clint Gutherson are skilful and ‘big’ players who’ll make big plays.
But their entire forward pack, including hooker and bench, while brutal and big, have less ‘X factor’ than an empty warehouse were they used to shoot the television program ‘X-Factor’.
And Raiders 26 will defeat Eels 22, I foresee it, up The Milk.
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In other news, paid subscribers to this crackerjack journal will receive a signed and delivered copy of The Milk, the book about 40 years of fandom for these our Canberra Raiders. Thought I’d sold the job lot but found a box of 20 in the garage, and if you’re a fan and you want a book of Raiders history from the POV of a fan, for $50 you won’t buy better Milk, something.