Here comes Canberra: Why the Raiders can go all the way
A season preview full of hope because a) that's what you have this time of year, b) Canberra is demonstrably better than at least eight other teams, and c) they're growing into a shit-hot footy team
And so it begins, another blessed NRL season, another glory ride, another train trip on dodgy rails, another boulevard of broken dreams.
For the fan pre-season means daring to dream and then, depending how old you are and how often you’ve been hurt, the realisation that’s been gnawing back of mind all along that, well, somewhere along the line your team is going to fall off the rails and go over the cliff. It’s about how long you got.
For the player these are exciting times. They’re fit and pumped and in the athletic prime of their lives, and they’re preparing to play, to show off on a huge stage in front of very noisy people. I played reserve grade rugby and it was a great buzz running with the ball as maybe 200 people urged you home: Go, son! Go!
Doing that in front of tens of thousands of teeming multitudes, with millions more watching on television, all of them roaring hoarse, well … little wonder try-scorers throw the ball in the air and leap like happy clappers in rapture. Must be brilliant.
For the more hard-bitten of rugby league media, bless them and all who sail in them, the dawn of a new season is like going into a tunnel, the walls of which are plastered with rugby league, and all the egos and angst and bullshit and hubris and laughs and drunkeness and tempered exhilaration and fear of fucked up facts and dusted deadlines.
And yet they love it. They eat it all season. For it’s a job that people inhabit like skin.
I’m largely not on the conveyor belt of news-chasing and breaking but rather reporting on 2-3 games a week for Uncle Ruprecht and media managing Accor and CommBank Stadiums, which means I’m able to leave the lime green fan hat on.
And heading into ‘23, subjectively and objectively, there’s plenty of promise, as there often is.
On the up, The Milk
We’ve lost a few goodn’s - Adam Elliott, I think, most of all. I do love Josh Hodgson and John Bateman was a favourite, and I wish them largely well. But I fear the Eels and Tiges have bought a pair of old Pommy crocks.
The Raiders? Are good enough for sixth. Or fifth. Or even fourth.
And from there, to make the grand final, it’s like tossing coins on Anzac Day: you’ve just got to come up trumps three times in a row.
And from there, baby, from there, you dare to dream.
Dream this: Canberra is legitimate top-4 contender because Canberra is demonstrably better than eight teams in the 17-team competition: Warriors, Dragons, Tigers, Titans, Knights, Broncos, Sea Eagles and Dolphins.
Shuffle ‘em around. But that’s your bottom eight.
I have us roughly on par with Sharks, Cowboys, Bulldogs, Storm. We’ll fight for 5-8 with those guys.
And we’ll scrap to get into the top-4, for mine, with: Rabbitohs, Roosters, Panthers, Eels. We’re not far off those guys. But head-to-head, at their homes, they’d be $1.35 and we’d be $3.10.
And I will take those odds a time or two because as Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) said in Pulp Fiction: that’s how you’re gonna beat ‘em, Butch. They keep on underestimating ya.
The players probably don’t, they’re so well-drilled to focus not on outcomes and controlling the controllable. But Sydney media continually underestimates Canberra Raiders, I can tell you that for nothing for I have taken many cartons of beer from these people. And some of that negativity can’t help but leech into the sub-conscious of certain players. Sydney media, it’s not their fault, live in a bubble of Sydney rugby league. And I know this because I am Sydney media. But I’m like a plant. A pot-plant, even, with a little hidden camera. And thus for me it’s not a shock when we beat the Big Sydney Teams away, it’s just not likely to happen two out of three times. And that’s why you get those odds.
Fact: we can beat ‘em all. We have. And everywhere.
Player Power
Ricky Stuart has kept the faith. Cynics will say we couldn’t buy anyone. Fact is he was good with who we have, outside replacing Elliott which he’s looking to do by going hard after old mate David Fifita.
And as an aside there’s a raging bull who’ll want to earn his keep in the Capital, from fans and peers and Sticky alike, if we’re paying you near seven figures, Bubba, you best have a fuckin crack.
Regardless, I like us. Because - and it’s a thing that fans, media, everyone can forget - players improve.
In their early 20s, men are still growing. Not upwards, generally. But outwards physically, and in their minds, emotionally, one hundred per cent. They’re becoming the best they can be.
It’s a common trope that an NRL player is an NRL player at 100 games and that anaerobic, collision sport athletes peak, mind and body, from 25-28.
Not everyone: Laurie Daley did some of his best work before he was 25. Brad Clyde the same. Weird cousin Nathan Cleary and Cameron Murray are very decent examples today.
Yes, as Matt Nable would say: What about these blokes.
Nick Cotric, 24, 123 games.
Corey Harawira-Naera, 27, 114 games
Cory Horsburgh, 25, 60 games
Tom Starling, 24, 63 games
Joe Tapine, 28, 165 games
Hudson Young, 24, 73 games - and some of them Origin, surely, this year or next.
On top of that there’s a choice smattering of talented jung - Xavier Savage (20), Harley Smith-Shields (23), Matt Timoko (23), Seb Kris (23) and James Schiller (21) - all just on the verge of coming into themselves as players and as men. They can only get better. They will get better. This is the year they do it.
Then you’ve got your ornaments, veterans, champions: Jordan Rapana, Josh Papalii, Jack Wighton, Elliott Whitehead and Jarrod Croker who they’ll play somewhere, anywhere, in eight games to get him to 300, because he’s a top bloke.
Elsewhere I’m unconvinced but would love to be convinced by Emre Guler, 25, while Zac Woolford, 26, appears on a promise with new bloke in green Danny Levi.
Halfback Jamal Fogarty is 29 and played 56 games, and once seemed a quality half in the Queensland Cup. But he’s bloomed late, Jamal, and will be handy for us in the seven in a Chad Townsend at the Cows kind of way. That being under-rated, under the radar, consistent, quality.
And then in the nine is said nippy, dunno-man, Levi, who’s 28 and played 112 games at three clubs. I want to like him, reckon I will. But Harry Grant he is not.
Prove me wrong, Kiwi international who would’ve come cheap and who scored a cracking try in the trial against Wests Tigers at Belmore, and you can check it out by clicking below though, a warning: look no further, Canberra’s defence on the edges is porous, and best left unlamented.
But I like us anyway. Equal parts head, equal parts because I just do.
And so! Until next time: Up. The. Milk!