Like Magic: Raiders to blow by busted Bulldogs
We tipped them to beat Broncos, Dragons and Dolphins, and wallowed in great acclaim. And we'll wallow again when Canberra Raiders go four on the trot after blowing by broken Bulldogs Friday night.
AND SO TO Brisvegas for the broken Bulldogs, and a good-sized sniff at four on the trot. Heady and good times, friends, given just a month ago so many legions of experts and bookmakers and fans and non-believers! heretics! declared that after the 50-point pummelling by Penrith Panthers that it was all over for Canberra Raiders for season 2023, sack Ricky, sack Jack, sack them mother-lovin all.
The Germans would have a word for the joy it will bring me to type ‘Get that bang India!’ when we win again, and well, starting tonight with the busted Dogs.
A win will put us on 12 points where currently sits Sharks, Roosters, Souths, Storm. You know – the ‘contenders’, according to the Accepted Group Think of experts.
Above them on 14 points, Brisbane Broncos. Who we beat.
Keep them fit and we’re right in this, peeps. This competition, it ebbs and flows with the fitness of key players.
Consider South Sydney Rabbitohs, with Latrell Mitchell gangbusters, widely considered your premiers.
Souths have to play another 15 competition games.
There is a three-match, six-week State of Origin series that will beat up on - and possibly injure for the season - Mitchell, Cam Murray, Damien Cook and you could throw in Campbell Graham and Keoan Koloamatangi.
It is May 5.
And Storm, Roosters, Panthers and an entire menagerie of creatures such as the lurking Shark, the rising Warrior, the totally wild Dolphin have affectations to a top-4 spot and a three-match winning streak into ever-lastin’ glory.
Throw in our people, people. We make that top-4, fit and firing, we are 3-1 the field, no matter who’s there, too.
Believe it.
WROTE LAST WEEK that after signing with South Sydney and having a month or so of gibber-jabber in the news and anti-social media Jack Wighton, because of loyalty, would have a storming Norman of a game against Redcliffe Dolphins.
Wrote that he’d do it for his people, that he’d score a try and setup two more and rip off a series of front-on jolt shots that put a hot Wagga wind up the tourists from north Bris.
And he did all that, and didn’t he what. And then he cried afterwards and Ricky Stuart cried afterwards, too, and if you don’t think people who spend all their working and playing lives with one another, more than they spend with their wives and kids, if you think they don’t care for each other and play for each other and form a brotherhood that lasts their entire lives then, Bubba, you have never smelled Dencorub in a dressing room.
Hell – I played eight years of lower grade rugby for Canberra Royals and can count upwards of a hundred people I still count as friends 26 years later. See them once a year, take up where left off.
It is a thing.
Want to know another thing? The Raiders can ride the emotion all year and into the finals. Play for something bigger than themselves. Do it for Jack. Do it for Sticky. Do it for the cracking pseudo-city of Canberra and the fans therein and like me out.
Do it.
BUT FIRST, of course, the Dogs of War in game one of Magic Round and, well, we should not lose. The Bulldogs have more injuries than Phil Gould has gigs.
There’s no Josh Addo-Carr, no Viliame Kikau, no Luke Thompson. Throw in the excellent Braidon Burns and with many of the replacements and support cast characters only playing because of pain-numbing needles, it’s a wonder they’re even competitive much less knocking over Saints down the Gong.
Top of that they want to punt the halfback. The five-eighth’s playing seven. Josh Reynolds is a lunatic and two seasons too long. The winger is a fellow called Declan Casey who’s played five first grade games.
But tough shit. The Raiders made the eight last year with the hooker out for the season (after eight minutes of game one), the halfback didn’t play until round 15 or something, and the fullback was out for 12 weeks.
The Dogs do have three weapons: Reed Mahoney is a nuggety and tricky little beast in the nine. Matt Burton’s bombs are so big and so good they should be renamed ‘Burtons’ like Dick Fosbury’s flop. And Tevita Pangai Junior can rumble up guts with aggression and lightness of foot.
But we’ve got three or four of him. And the Dogs do not. And our backs are heaps better, too.
STRANGE THEN that Albert Hopoate would go to a wedding and give up his wing spot to Xavier Savage. For with Nick Cotric coming back soon and Jordan Rapana not going anywhere (unless, you know, the judiciary orders otherwise) you’d suggest Albert hasn’t made the greatest tactical decision.
Indeed you wonder if we’ll see him again in first grade this year. Went okay, Hoppa. But as a horse racing tipping sheet would have it: prefer others – particularly those who’d prefer to play than go to a wedding.
Elsewhere big Seb Kris had his best game at fullback last weekend, Matt Timoko keeps on making good incisions and Jarrod Croker’s composure - even presence - was key.
Jamal Fogarty, of course, did what was expected – but no less appreciated – when he iced the cake for the premiership points that took us to a game outside four teams in equal second.
Wighton had a blinder first half. And in the second, like everyone, let the bastards back in. And mentally, back of the mind, for players and fans and dear sweet Stick, the famous Raiders Fade Out remains a thing.
But then the Dolphins go okay. They’re top-8 material. As are we. And then some.
Telling you, again, and I’ll keep on telling you until the boys book flights for Bali, we are right in this 2023 NRL premiership.
Raiders by 13.
Up the Milk.