Huddo-free in the Hunter? No worries for rampant Raiders
Hudson Young will miss tonight's match in Newcastle to rest a bruised and inflamed pubic bone ahead of Wednesday week's Origin decider. But Knights will still say NI! to these our rampant Raiders
Play it long enough and physically enough and the greatest game of all rugby league can hurt just about all your bits. It’s fast and it’s brutal, and there are collisions that could just about kill people who hadn’t hardened their bodies to withstand them.
If you were standing in an aisle at Bunnings and Joe Tapine ran at you full tilt and crashed into you, it would be like being hit by a runaway forklift.
Hudson Young plays fast, brutal and collision-prone rugby league, and is among the best exponents of the practice in this man’s National Rugby League. But his body is still made of the same flesh and tissue as everybody’s, especially on the inside. And his pubic bone, when bruised and inflamed as it is been through the horrible-sounding osteitis pubis ailment will still give him sufficient gip to rule him out of a Friday night game particularly with a State of Origin decider coming up.
Anyway he’s not bloody playing tonight at McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle, a stupid name for a stadium in Newcastle, but Simi Sasagi, Zac Hosking, Ata Mariota, Corey Horsburgh and Noah Martin will be, and those people will be plenty enough to see off dangerous Knights on their home patch in the Hunter.
Dangerous? These Knights? The tied-13th Knights? The two-and-five at home Knights?
Yes, those Knights. Too right. This is a banana peel game.
Consider: the leading team for post-contact metres in the 2025 competition is our Canberra Raiders. The second-placed team is Newcastle Knights. The team with the most tackle breaks (556) is, again, our Canberra Raiders. In second with 550 tackle breaks? That’s right, again, these Newcastle Knights.
The Knights are second in running metres, fourth in runs, and top the league in tackles. So, it’s not like they have shed the working class ethos that’s so long personified their honourable sports brand. They always give you a hard game … it’s just that you most often win.
Why have they been going so shit? Errors. They top the league for errors (201). It’s why they’re last in the league for completions (74 percent). They’re also second for ineffective tackles (289) while our Raiders have the least (159).
But still I say: banana peel game.
Because Kalyn Ponga. Because Bradman Best. Because of their combination on the left that our one-time wing-man James Schiller has profited from six times this season.
On the other side Dane Gagai is as hard as he ever was, and Dominic Young’s outside him and can run like a very fast Clydesdale. If those five people find space, they can do things to you.
Yet they’re missing free-running five-eighth Fletcher Sharpe (equal-second on the NRL try-scoring list with 11 ) while Jackson Hastings is an odd bird in the six and Jack Cogger a doughty servant in the seven, and you’d have our six and seven over theirs every day of this week and the next, and the one after that.
But I still fear their back division. If they ever stop dropping the ball they can be dangerous people.
But we’ll beat ‘em, still. Because in the forwards, even sans our man Huddo, our mighty forward pack will storm across the advantage line like the 15th Panzer Division in the deserts of North Africa in 1942. Or something I don’t know, a fraught business referencing military history, even Anzac Round, and particularly when it’s about the baddies.
Regardless, Joe Tapine and Josh Papali’i, and after them Mariota, Sasagi and mighty Morgan Smithies, will bullock their way downtown, and rough up and verily brutalise the listless Jacob Saifiti, the workhorse Dylan Lucas, and the old, so very old, be proud of the body of work, old mate, you’ve left it all out there, no-one will ever debate that, yours has been a glorious and noble journey, but it’s time for a rest, Tyson Frizell.
Plus their bench has less pedigree than the last race at Cannington greyhounds.
And thus Canberra Raiders 26 will defeat Newcastle Knights 12 tonight at McDonald Jones stupid name for a Stadium.
Up the Milk!
Newcastle has always been our bogie team. Let’s hope we can shake it tonight. If we do we go to the top of the ladder up the milk.