Monster's Ball: Wighton and big units key in must-win clash with Roosters
And so it comes down to this: final round, the Roosters in Mackay. Lose and it's Mad Monday. Win and it, well, might still be Mad Monday. But at least they'll have sent a club legend out the right way
And so to the Roosters, the “reserve grade” Roosters who can lose - channel your best Dr Evil - $4.5 million worth of people and still trot out a Best XVII that can run fourth in the National Rugby League if they knock over Canberra Raiders in the final round fixture at BP Print Stadium in Mackay on Thursday night.
As we’ve mooted in previous missives and as Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (Sean Connery) said in the film Highlander (1986) - it’s a kind of magic.
But enough of these Eastern Suburbs elites. While I do actually like their club and their players even James Tedesco who spurned us so long ago, in the short hours until kick-off in the round 25 hit-out between their people and our people, they are a bigger enemy than IS-K whoever those beardy weirdos are.
Maybe not that big.
But big, man. Big.
Now! Mathematically the game is actually not must-win and/or sudden-death for Green Machine. If there is a draw and the Sharks lose, in goes the Machine. But - as famous mathematics man John Nash (Russell Crowe) said in A Beautiful Mind (2001), that movie about mathematics - fuck mathematics.
The Raiders need to win. Must win. And then they can sit back, perhaps with a tinnie around a fire pit, and watch Melbourne Storm - another club with other-worldly depth - beat up on Cronulla Sharks in their bid for the well-regarded (if ultimately largely forgotten) J.J. Giltinan Shield awarded the NRL’s Minor Premier.
Before then, however, the dastardly Chooks of Evil, who welcome back a talisman in Jared Waerea-Hargreaves. Again, I like the bloke. Told a story about him. Nice fellah. But Josh Papalii, Emre Guler, Ryan Sutton, Corey “Big Red” Horsburgh and dear old Iosia “Rodney” Soliola whom team-mates have lobbied into the XVII must - and I choose these words carefully - kill him.
Not kill him. Please. As if. Come on, man. We’re not savages.
But our big units, our enforcers, if you will, and I do, must rush the Kiwi monster and monster him, and do it often and in big, aggressive numbers so that he tires and weakens and exposes the Roosters’ baby bench.
Because, as Kate Cerebrano sang, Young boys are my weakness / I just like their sweetness / Hey boys let's mess around / I wanna party with you on the town / Some boys really make me swing / There ain't nothin' like a pretty young thing, and so on, so it is with the Roosters pine-riders, a four-prong mini-squad of baby-faced man-children.
There’s one boy, Ben Marschke, who’s so fresh the Roosters don’t have a picture of him, or his date of birth, anything. Egan Butcher, 21, the poor man’s Nat Butcher, looks like Billy Bunter. Two years ago Tuku Hau Tapuha played for Queensland U/18s. Tuku? Meet Papa, and Rodney, and Ryan, and Big Red, and our own baby-faced assassin Hudson Young who may bring all the mad snark he likes into this must-win belt-fest.
The Roosters do have a danger man-child on their bench and that is Sam Walker. He looks spindly. Because he is spindly. Yet the Son of Ben and Nephew of Chris and Shane will have a crack given he’s learned halves play at the teet of Cooper Cronk who learned it from Matthew Johns. Lion King, circle of life something-something.
Regardless. Sammy? Meet Papa, Rodney, Big Red et al…
The Chooks also look light on in the halves - Lachlan Lam and Drew Hutchison - and one assumes Jack Wighton, Young and Seb Kris will aim much action left, not sure why Jordan Rapana will be on the other side but one is not to query Ricky Stuart in times as these, no sirree Bob Cooper.
So: I like us on the left and I like us in the halves. I like us at nine. I like us on the bench. I like us in the centres and wings where Daniel Tupou and Josh Morris loom large but where our guys are in pretty fair form, too.
I like us, too, in the engine room even if the Roosters starting pack is chock-full of hard people. Isaac Liu, under-rated, many one per centers, thighs like concrete bollards. Siosiua Taukeiaho is the same person with an offload. Angus Crichton is back after three weeks suspension. He will be leaping out of his skin-folds.
But our guys, our big units, with their own great talisman Rodney Soliola playing potentially his last ever game should they lose … well, we’ll bloody see. But motivation will course bubbling hot through the veins of these people.
Where I fear the Roosters, of course, is at fullback. Because Tedesco can do anything. That guy, you almost have to take it as read he’ll shred you at some stage. You just have to shred him back.
And thats’ where, for mine, it’s on J.Wighton. Andrew Johns tipped him for man-of-the-match. The big six is in decent form. But due a blinder. Here’s hoping it’s Thursday night.
So. Nervous, much? Oh, yes, quite a bit.
But should we hold the footy, complete the sets, build the foundations, crush our enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women - and stay on the right side of referee Gerard Sutton’s interpretation of six-again - we have the manpower and motivation to tear the Chooks new bot-bots.
Go us.
So there it is, sports fans – fifth and second-last fully-free column of “The Milk”. Next up we’ll analyse the match within an inch of its life. Do click Subscribe for word when we publish. going forward there’ll be one free one a week. Could be column like this, big match preview, Q&A from a podcast with Terry Regan. Those who kick in $6 a month (or $60 for 12 months) receive all the stuff. Those who kick in $100 will be Founding Members and receive a signed copy of “The Milk: Forty years of Canberra Raiders in 20 games” - published in March of 2022.
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Go Raiders.