Machine can take plenty from one-point loss in North Queensland air soup
Canberra Raiders lost 19-18 to title favourites North Queensland Cowboys on their home patch, the difference a dropped ball and a dropped goal. Disappointing. But club can take plenty from it.
Well.
The Cowboys in Townsville. Our boys in Cowsville.
Call it what you will.
I would call it quite, tending to very, bloody disappointing.
One dropped ball gifted the Cowboys field position and their very good halfback Chad Townsend showed why he’s on $800,000 each year and slotted the one pointer, and that was us, done and done, 19-18, you should get a bonus point or something for getting so close, doesn’t seem fair it’s two premiership points to none for 80 minutes of effective parity.
That will sound like sour grapes, of course. And, of course, that is correct. For what other taste do grapes have when you fight your way back from 18-nil and lose to a field goal? They don’t taste like the top grapes one might hand-feed Cleopatra.
Of course, of course – you get that. That’s footy. And all that.
Doesn’t mean you have to like it.
Granted, earlier, the Cows had so much possession and territory that they’d run through us like so many Epsom Salts, a bad laxative.
We gave up shitloads of possession, field position and three unanswered tries. Scott Drinkwater, told you he was very good, scored two of them and was involved in a carry and shift to Val Holmes whose quick hands assisted Murray Taulagi to leap into the corner.
One of the best bits of footy, quick hands out the back, it doesn’t get the kudos it should, to catch-and-pass in one movement, under the pump from rushing defence, is tricky, ballsy stuff.
And many an NRL team will put points on you if they’re in your red zone for so many tackles in so few minutes.
Need proof? We did it back to the Cowboys with effectively the same numbers. And that’s why it was 18-all until the 75th minute when the Cows had possession in good territory, and Townsend did a simple thing well.
And we learned, or re-learned, this: the 2023 NRL competition is ultra competitive and even after one round the experts are reeling in predictions. Some are re-writing top-4s, top-8s, one week in. Bookies, too. For as gamblers would tell, exposed form is the best form.
And the form says: the Panthers, Eels, Roosters and Bulldogs aren’t as good as we thought.
The Broncos and – sound all the trumpets from Caxton Street to the mighty, palm-lined boulevard of Redcliffe Parade – Dolphins are better than we thought.
And our boys, these plucky and resilient Canberra Raiders, will beat plenty of good sides in 2023 if – and yes, it’s an if – we have the best team on the park, play simple, brutal rugby league, and don’t give the other team the ball too much.
For here’s a thing: it doesn’t take much to not win two premiership points. And so we can take plenty from the one-point loss to Cows in the Townsville air-soup.
For one, as ever, they wrote us off. It’s actually one of the Raiders’ superpowers: they keep on underestimating ya, as Bruce Willis said in his role as ‘Butch Coolidge’ in Pulp Fiction when he went back to his flat to get the gold watch, his daddy’s war watch, the uncomfortable hunk of metal that his dad and Christopher Walken’s ‘Captain Koons’ hid up their asses a total of seven years in a Hanoi pit of hell.
Regardless - once our boys get the ball the same amount as the other team, we can beat anyone.
Fact.
Anyone.
N. E. 1.
And that’s not just because the Raiders are good at footy, though they are, and when Josh Papalii (calf, round 4), Jordan Rapana (suspension, round 5) and Xavier Savage (jaw, round 8) come back they’ll be better again.
Rather, it’s the nature of modern rugby league. Game plans are simple and brutal: fill the legislated yardage with big units, rip off the odd offload, kick-and-chase like berserkers, rough them up in the tackle, do some tricky-passy-kicky stuff near the opposition try-line. And repeat.
And repeat this often enough and you will, fact, score points.
Unfortunately for the Raiders the other team did it too and scored 19 points and the other Raiders could score only 18 points. And that’s just how things going roll on occasion.
Ask the premiers. Ask Parramatta. Ask the Roosters!
Ask Parramatta of 2001 who lost two games of their last 18 games, one of them the grand final.
Parra were awesome in 2001. But one game, one opponent on song, one ambush - boom. So much brown bread.
And that’s why I reckon if we make the eight, we’re good a chance as anyone. Three wins on the trot you’re in the grand final. It’s three heads in a row at two-up.
Yes - we’re a week in.
But just as you wouldn’t write off the Riff or Parra after tight losses at home on the weekend, nor get too jiggy about Manly knocking off bad Dogs at Brookvale, you wouldn’t write off Canberra because North Queensland beat them in the syrupy humidity of Townsville where cold climate Canberrans go to die, as so many pundits predicted.
Keep on underestimating us, experts. We’ll keep collecting six-packs in bets.
Now - let’s go fuck up those ‘Phins.