It won't be easy but Raiders can upset the black Panther party.
Penrith haven't lost at home in 20 games. Canberra is missing their captain who's missing teeth. But hold the ball, play without fear and Raiders can get the biscuits against the chocolate soldiers
And so to Penrith Park for a magnificent round seven clash with Penrith Panthers that pundits, punters and makers of sports books have deemed, effectively, a one-horse race.
And given the premiers are undefeated and our Canberra Raiders are two from six, including dual losses to North Queensland Cowboys, it is perhaps hard to argue.
But argue we will! For as Wests Tigers showed with the Jackson Hastings Show against Parramatta Eels last weekend, one man’s hundred grand at $1.05 is another’s … well, that was his folly, old mate, though if you’ve got a hundred large to splash about…
Something. Anyway. The Canberra Raiders, our plucky little buckeroos, do have a chance, even if said book-makers deem it one chance in eight.
For have the Raiders strung together a couple of not untidy, even quality passages of 40 minutes here and there, as hot potato passes have stuck and they’ve ploughed across the stripe.
Or what Penrith call “playing footy”.
For to beat Penrith in Penrith where they have not lost for 20 games, will take Canberra’s best 80 minutes of 2022. It will take close to a perfect game in terms of completed sets and correct options, and the right mix of throw-it-around ‘fun’ and hard-eyed game management.
It would also not hurt if the Panthers suffer from a little hint of boredom-for-winning-too-much.
Bottom line: a Canberra win is a tough sell. Not sure I can even prosecute a case.
Ricky Stuart can. Asked how Canberra would beat Penrith on Sunday he said: “We’ve got to play 80 minutes of football.” And left it at that.
Press prodded for the obvious: how, Sticki?
“It’s a choice – players and coaches have an obligation to do their best. That’s what we’ve got to. Be the best we can on the weekend,” Stuart replied without offering any specifics because he’s not allowed to tell his players, at least publicly, “for dear sweet Mal Meninga’s sake stop dropping the godforsaken ball, are there not sufficient dimples on the all-weather Steeden? don’t answer that you fools it was rhetorical just stop bloody dropping it.”
They must also tackle like Spartans defending that crack in the cliff where all those mad baddies tried to get through in that 300 film about Spartans defending a crack in a cliff from a giant god-thing man and so many legions of ever madder baddies.
Not helping the cause is the absence of Elliot Whitehead, out with an icky gob injury after bashing heads with a young buck at training and bending his top row of teeth, We can forget it or never have even known it but these footballers do things to themselves that would get an office worker eight weeks’ stress leave, even PTSD.
Madder still is Whitehead wanted to play but Stuart said no, champion, you just rest your great big bashed up head.
And so! In comes boom baby Pom Harry Rushton and no longer injured toe man Hudson Young who’s dynamism has been missed.
How new skipper Jack Wighton goes prosecuting the combination of ‘fun’ footy and guiding his people around the park will be another of the sub-texts of the fixture.
Jordan Rapana goes to fullback to catch the ball better than benched Charnze Nicol-Klokstad has been while hot-footed X-Man Xavier Savage goes to the right wing to benefit from the internal work of Wighton, Brad Schneider (who I saw at a golf day at Murrumbidgee the other day and I said to my mate Mick, that bloke plays footy I’m pretty sure and Mick said yeah dunno), Semi Valemei and Corey Harawira-Naera whose flick to Rapana for a try last week was Globetrotter good.
Anyway, the Raiders are 8-1, they say, in a two-horse race and if – big, even massive if – they can put together 80 minutes of clinical, no mistakes and harum-scarum rugby league - again, what Penrith calls “playing footy” - they can put the frighteners on these Penrith Panthers, fact.
But yes, hard to prosecute a case given the half-dozen Panthers who may be in Brad Fittler’s Blues this mid-year rep season, and the rest who play footy like hard-eyed professionals pissing about in the park, a heady combination.
Panthers by 10.
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The book? Still chugging along and out the garage door and available at this very reputable website. Have sold about 600 of the thousand and am still due a little sugar hit from none other than Canberra Raiders whose big chief Don Furner has purchased 50 copies to hand out at Old Boys Day on against the Dogs in a couple of weeks.
So that’s pretty cool and better than some chap in NRL licensing, whatever that is, emailing to say the book was “not permitted under any circumstances”, a subscribers-only story for another time once I’ve convinced Big Donny and Canberra Raiders Inc. to order some more copies and to sell them online in their online and retail shops.
And if anyone were to, oh, you know, email Raiders Shop at shop@raiders.com.au or Tweet to @RaidersCanberra and ask, innocently, where one might buy that book called “The Milk” because you’d heard it’s grouse and selling thousands, then that would be quite good. Ha.
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In press news this week had a chat with the great Rob Corra for the That’s The Way It Was website, and this is that. Runs an hour. Would suggest ears in mowing the lawn or going for a nice walk, or simply lying back on the couch and luxuriating in the aural medium.
Who writes this stuff.
Bye for now.
Up The Milk.