Homesick for hell: Raiders banshees to flay hot Chooks at Allianz
It's third versus 12th, one Origin player backing up versus five, angry bushmen of the Monaro versus eastern suburbs elite. And it should be a beauty.
And so to mighty Allianz in the heart of old Sydney Town, and the home town Roosters, and their squad full of very eastern suburbs names, Spencer and Teddy and Angus and Lindsay and Billy and Hugo and Blake and Connor and Egan, it’s less NRL team list as roll call for a creche in Rushcutters Bay.
But they’re good, the Chooks, and tough, despite people saying they are not, nobody can tip for beer nuts this season, every game’s $1.90 the field, as indeed this one is.
So yes, the Roosters at Allianz, a stadia name I’ve long put in italics because you have to say it like you’re a member of the French resistance fighting for the Allianz, there is every chance this is just me.
Regardless, we beat ‘em, as we did last year when severely under-manned, and I was there in the Members at Allianz and half-cut and roaring like a fog-horn, Go RaidERS! with big emphasis on the last syllable, and people turned around and rubbed their ears, wondering how a shaggy bush-person had infiltrated this gilded citadel of the eastern suburbs elite.
Or something I dunno, but I was quite loud, and one man turned around and rubbed his ear and I said sorry because I did yell in his ear, it was funny.
But loud I will be again when we roast these Chooks at their home ground, the very excellent 40,000-plus-er, Allianz.
How so? This so, friend:
Fresh Joe Tapine, fresh Josh Papali’i, fresh Morgan Smithies, fresh and Origin-miffed-and-now-auditioning Corey Horsburgh, behold, the four horseman of the Rooster apocalypse. We will fight them on the beaches, said Winston Churchill, and the Ricky Stuart will send big men up guts all day to devastating effect.
Them? Lindsay Collins and Spencer Leniu are quality, ruck-rumblers and angry people, no lack of respect here. But we’ve got four of them. And theirs played Origin on Wednesday night, as did Connor Watson, Robert Toia and Angus Crichton who played 80 minutes.
The Raiders single Origin man, Hudson Young, played 26 minutes. And he could play an an Origin series every week, and still be out there frothing in golden point of game three.
Tom Starling’s a big out, he’s been going gangbusters since Canberra signed the Newcastle Knights’ nine, Jayden Brailey. Indeed you wonder if we need the man given today’s starting nine, Owen Pattie, is creative and tough, a heady combination.
While he is not nicknamed “And Selma” but should be, it’ll be good to see what the man from Yeppoon can do with 60 minutes, and what sort of run they give the penetrator, Danny Levi.
Elsewhere, I like us in the halves, I like us on the bench, I like us in the middle and edges. I like Jamal Fogarty raining death from above and Young, Seb Kris, Xavier Savage and Kaeo Weekes screaming through like banshees homesick for hell, Aaaaiiieee! Teddeeee! We comin at you! At high speeeeed! Watch out! etc.
I do hold fears for us, however, wide and in the air when they have the Steeden, given their free-running and all-leaping back five, three of whom are six-three easy including the under-rated Billy Smith.
James Tedesco is playing many houses down. Daniel Tupou has been doing Daniel Tupou for a decade. And Mark Nawaqanitawase, who I’m told is keeping his powder dry on a return to the Wallabies ahead of the World Cup, inflates the Roosters’ and Rugby Australia’s asking price with each outing. Big unit, big game, big trouble.
But our boy, an early Rookie of the Year contender, Savelio Tamale, has stood up and hit back at every challenge thus far, and you sense there’s a bit about him, and that he would enjoy hushing up members of the eastern suburbs elite, their jowls wobbling under tri-colour scarves, as the score mounts up becoming ever more interested in their phones and their portfolios of crypto-currency, whatever that is, like betting on digital golden bits that don’t exist, far as I can tell, a pox upon the practice.
Whatevs.
Raiders by seven.
Up the Milk.