Milk launch season with Chook feather dust-up
They lost two halves to COVID-19, the captain has experimental stem cells in his knee and Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad wore No.7. But they still beat up on Baby Roosters, which is pleasing. Also book news.
Nation!
Good day to you.
Just a sports news update about the little book that could (and indeed will!) and the fine news that our Canberra Raiders knocked over Sydney Roosters at Leichhardt Oval on Friday night.
Yes, the Chooks trotted out 19 debutants and it was a trial on February 18.
But you score six tries to three and win 32-18 in a match in which both your halves don’t get on the bus because Covid, it doesn’t make you less confident.
Indeed it reminds of a line in the cracking film Mean Machine: The Longest Yard (1974) when prison inmate and former NFL quarterback Paul “The Wrecking” Crewe (Burt Reynolds) is explaining to Warden Hazen (Eddie Albert who was also in Green Acres with ‘Arnold’ the talking pig) the importance of trial games to a team’s confidence.
“You gotta get yourself a tune-up game, like the pros have,” Crewe tells Hazen who runs a semi-pro football team of prison guards.
“You line up a hungry team not in your league. The you bring them here and kick the shit out of them.”
The Raiders did not kick the shit out of the Roosters on Friday night but they took plenty from it, notably that Jarrod Croker scored a try, made a line break, ran 67m and kicked four goals with the stem-cells bubbling about in his knee cartilage.
There was also a standout performance from 19-year-old fullback Xavier Savage who tore around Leichhardt like Zebedee the Spring (below).
The performance gave attending media (a baby journo from Fox Sports, by the looks) an angle to riff on: that Savage was heaping ‘pressure’ upon incumbent No.1 Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad who wasn’t meant to play but ran around as halfback in Sam Williams’ stead.
“Teenage sensation Xavier Savage was sensational against a baby Roosters outfit and he’s put incumbent Green Machine fullback Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad under all sorts of pressure,” asserted the Fox Sports reporter.
Not sure tearing up Roosters U/23s in a trial mid-February qualifies, but it’s true that Savage is a little ripper, and no argument. And it’s a fine problem to have if it is one, namely which excellent player to play in the No.1.
For mine it’s CNK every day of the week but little Xave the Save could be a little bit special in a Ryan Papenhuyzen sort of way.
In a quite annoying and very early ‘20s commentary on what passes today for commentary (could be I’m getting old, however), Fox Sports’ report quoted Fox Sports’ employee Mick Ennis, who said in Fox Sports commentary: “I think Xavier Savage has been tremendous this afternoon at fullback.”
For ‘balance’, one assumes, Fox Sports also quoted Fox Sports commentator, Greg Alexander, who said of Nicoll-Klokstad: “I know he started off the bench and I know there’s been talk of him being in a battle with Xavier Savage for No. 1 - but I don’t care,” Alexander said on Fox Sports broadcast.
“You’ve got to have him in the starting side, he’s a great player and they missed him last year, they missed his energy.”
That they did, Brandi. That they did. And it’s clear we chalk our cues from the same blue receptacle. Because he’s a beaut, CNK, and is my fullback and yours, and where they put the little piss-bolter Savage, will be interesting.
Go them.
In brief:
Meanwhile, the little book that could and will, The Milk, is set to launch on Sunday March 6 at Queanbeyan Leagues Club. The excellent Nick ‘Raider Nick’ Risetski will be MC and we’re hoping to have a yarn with a player from a decade in each era, thinking Chris O’Sullivan, thinking Jason ‘Toots’ Croker, thinking Iosia ‘Rodney’ Soliola.
More news as it comes to hand, suffice to say you are all invited for a few beers and some top class chat of Green Machine and Milk. Invites in due course.
Also be setting up an e-commerce site so we can sell the things via the magic of the Internet, which has proven to be mostly a quite good invention.
Go well.
Up the Milk.
And bye for now.