Lucky they're at AAMI: Bashed by Benji's Babies, Raiders to upset Storm in Melbourne
The Nightmare of Campbelltown City is six short sleeps ago, and will have been playing on the players' minds and in their dreams. And, thus, a very Canberra upset is coming in Melbourne.
Well, that wasn’t very good was it.
Lapped 48-24 by Wests Tigers at Campbelltown, duds from go to whoa, all bad, zero mean, Green Machine, there were more fearsome men in the ACT wearing long white golf socks and peddling 10-speed bicycles around with doo-dads coming out their helmets to ward off attack by magpies; a tidy little segue for this gibber given they were swooped and had faces scratched by the talons of the Western Suburbs Magpies Harold Matthews class of 2002.
Jebus Christ and all the sweet children of the corn! The Tigers had three players aged 18. Five of them had played a collective total 20 games. Their first five try-scorers were 18, 18, 22, 18 and 22. One of them was born in June of 2006, there are older Vestal Virgins, whatever they are, the internet says “priestesses of Vesta, a virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame”, which is interesting if you’re into that sort of thing but not if you’re defending your defensive line in Campbelltown.
See it: For lo did not this baby boy scoot out from dummy-half 10 metres out and simply run through a Raiders defensive line that was waiting on the try-line for him to smash through them. Watching him. Wondering, what this bloke’s going to do. Oh. That’s what he’s going to do… bugger.
What was that about? Don’t answer that. I’ll answer that. It was, and how do we put this without being too indelicate, but it was: Flat-out shit-fuckin-house! Is what it was. You’d get more resistance from Swiss Army Reserves. They scored eight tries. There were three disallowed in the first 26 minutes.
It was just very bad. And not at all mean, unless you mean mean as in paucity of points, which you do not.
I was out there, for my many sins, covering the fixture for the tabloids of mad Uncle Ruprecht, and it wasn’t actually that bad, emotionally, given you have to turn your ‘fan’ head off to cover games like it. The fan’s there in the back of your melon, saying, This is hideous! Who are these people? But the journo sits front of brain, scoping angles for the Sydney paper, of which there were several, not least the 18-year-old babies who so tore through the bad and not at all mean, Green Machine.
In the presser, after Ricky Stuart had offered a series of monosyllables like “soft” and “weak” and “can’t” when asked to explain such shit-housery, a brilliant young reporter with an enquiring mind asked captain Elliot Whitehead for his take.
“We didn’t want to finish our sets where we spoke about finishing them all week. We turned the ball over. Once a team gets momentum in this league, it’s too hard to stop. The Tigers played well and we didn’t help ourselves by turning the ball over,” Whitehead said.
“It’s something we’ll have to fix up together. We’ll fight through it together. We’ve got a big task.”
The brilliant young reporter put a pen to his lips and asked the searing question on everyone’s lips: “Elliott, it seems like you lose games you’re meant to win. What’s doing with that? Is there something sub-conscious going on?”
Whitehead nodded, full of respect for the integrity and empathy in the reporter’s question, and said: “We’re just not being tough. We’re not completing our sets where we want them. We turn the ball over. We spoke about it all week and then go out and dish that rubbish up.
“We’re going to have to fix ourselves internally and we’re going to have to do it quickly if we’re going to keep our season alive.”
The resuscitation begins tonight, Saturday night, in Melbourne Town, and mighty Melbourne Storm, and even after successive floggings - in fact especially after successive floggings - and even after being so beaten up by so many western Sydney schoolchildren, I feel an upset is brewing. A big one. A one so big you can get fully sick six bucks at the bookies.
Now, unlike Errol Brown, lead singer of the British soul band ‘Hot Chocolate’, I don’t believe in miracles. But, you sexy thing, consider this morsel: the Raiders have won five of their last six at AAMI Park.
Hoodoos-schmoodoos? Agreed. It’s more coincidence than anything in their psyche, I think. Not to say the mind won’t play a part tonight, as that promising and good-looking young journalist alluded.
Because Melbourne Storm, having as many empathetic and nice humans as our Canberra Raiders, will be thinking, they won’t be able to help it: the Raiders are shit. We’re meant to win this. Someone will stand up. It’s all good. We can dial this one in.
And even with Craig Bellamy bellowing in their ears, and he will be, reminding them, seeking to sear it in like a brand: don’t take these people lightly you bastards I kill you! There’ll still be that thing, back of mind that whispers: we’re the favourites, we’re meant to win, we could beat these pricks in a captain’s run.
So, I reckon it’ll be close. And it’s our kids will win it for us.
Albert Hopoate’s back on the wing. Kaeo Weekes’ kicking and running game is coming on. And young fancy-feet, Ethan Strange, won’t have two flat-out shockers on the trot.
And all the rest of them, who actually match up better than okay against Storm, at least on the ever reliable barometer of ‘paper’, will have the week’s video nasty playing in their dreams. And we’re about find out if being called “weak” and “soft” and “like big and flouncy ladies’ nylon blouses”, and many other epithets by coachy has any effect on their pride and subsequent performance.
Them? Storm is very good. Leaning to testing material. Unflashy, strong, effective. Consistent - they complete and repeat. They rip in. They cause pain. They don’t make it easy. They have four game-breakers and 13 complete-repeat-ripper-inners.
Jahrome Hughes, Harry Grant, Xavier Coates and Ryan Papenhyzen represent marquee meat of this man’s National Rugby League. Three in the spine and a super-flying wingman. But here’s a Thing, fan-fam: they’re not even sure that three of those people will play, morning of the match.
Papenhyzen - poor Papenhyzen - has been out so long he’s more moon-boot than man. Grant and Coates played State of Origin three sleeps ago. Hughes will play, of course, he’s a ripper, the captain, and if someone could do something to, you know, hurt him, in the back-ribs perhaps, let’s pick a man at random Hudson Young, that would go a long way to winning this fixture for our dear sweet nothing-if-not-enigmatic Canberra Raiders.
I like us.
Raiders by 1.
Up the Milk.