Not upset: Raiders to smoke Broncos in bash-fest at Bruce
A 14-day turnaround, the early season vagaries of the NRL, and Sydney media, are among manifold reasons Canberra Raiders will beat - and compete very hard with - Brisbane Broncos on Saturday night.
People of The Milk! Good day, and a very good game day to you.
The Broncos at home? As his landlady said to George Thorogood: “That don’t confront me.”
Because, as ever, I like us.
Now, I would not be betting heavily upon us, however, but then I would not be betting heavily upon Brisbane Broncos, either, given the vagaries of this man’s National Rugby League mean Roosters can beat Panthers and Warriors can beat Sea Eagles, and everyone is werry surprised.
After one round of footy the pundits - blessed pundits - effectively anointed Brisbane as grand finalists and Roosters as wooden spooners, and, as ever, our Canberra Raiders out of sight and mind, the Cowboys of the Monaro, who are these people.
Which is good. It’s how we like it. And it can’t help but eke into the Broncos’ sub-conscious that they’re $1.20 favourites and we’re 7/2 in a two-horse race. And we’re better than 7/2 in this two-horse race, yes sirree Bob “The Bear” O’Reilly.
But then I almost don’t mind if we go down if there’s 80 minutes of intense physical activity. If we compete, physically, at each play, and rough them up at the ruck, and run diamond hard lines into the meat of their middle, and go down because Reece Walsh sluices through us as Reece Walsh can, you’ll just about cop it. Being beaten by really good play is no shame if you’re clutching a sock and bleeding on the turf behind it.
But we can win this, 100 percent. Because with the application of said intense physical activity for long periods of this fixture, we’ll be right in it. Look at Hudson Young here in Vegas. Competing, hard, every play. He’s a ripper, Huddo. You had 17 of him you wouldn’t get a lot of 40/20s but you’d bash shit out of the other mob, a lot.
Have a go at him. You’d get less effort from the last few in Squid Game.
Vegas? It’s been a14-day turnaround since and that, friends, is golden. Our people will have done nothing for a week outside play golf and swim down the coast at Broulee, before returning, refreshed, for a week of Ricky Stuart priming them for the Broncos and the fact Sydney media – those bastards – have written us off because the Broncos put 50 on the Roosters last week.
The Roosters have since show the Panthers are but human, and the Broncos are just as human, and there’s only been one (1) round of this National Rugby League, and deciding favouritism in these fixtures, much less the entire marathon that is the greater premiership is not only fraught, it’s silly.
How do you know how much people have improved, or not?
Know this: our people have improved. The kids have 50-odd games. The experienced men remain prime, even Josh Papali’i is carting the pill into the middle like a boulder with arms. We are a hard-boned and dangerous, competitive squadron. We will hurt these mighty Clydesdales, if nothing else.
We will miss Joey Tapine, quite a lot, of course. That guy running at the dangerous Payne Haas, in defence and attack, that stuff would shake firmaments, and structural beams, and so many concrete abutments.
And Xavier Savage is my selection for breakout man of the competition, and he’s out and that’s not ideal, of course, you’d love to see him running, hard-boned and free, at these visiting Vegans.
But as there’s opportunity in crisis, so too is there opportunity in team-mates being suspended. And Albert Hopoate is no mug, and nor is Corey Horsburgh who will run straight at Pat Carrigan in the 10, all froth and bother and intense physical activity, a mode of play not foreign to our New Pom, Matty Nicholson, who’ll roar in off the bench on debut.
See also Zac Hosking and Morgan Smithies and the Big-bopping Ata Mariota. Each will be a factor in this fixture, and each will offer so many minutes of intense physical activity. I’m telling you - Stuart is a peer of Craig Bellamy’s, and that guy - and there’s a really good doco on Stan now about him - has competed for 20 years with a mantra of, effectively, intense physical activity.
How do we beat them? How we always beat them. And anybody. Jamal Fogarty will launch abominations from space and we’ll chase like devil dogs and smash their back three, and the next chumps up after that.
And repeat.
Once their big units are rooted and less alert, Tom Starling, Owen Pattie, Ethan Strange and Kaeo Weekes will hot-step up guts, frightening their lumbering middles as smart-arse mice frighten elephants in so many allegories - eeeek!
Hot stepping? We get the ball in their Danger Zone, watch Matty Timoko scorch the earth and run roughshod through the Broncos evocatively-named journeyman No.3, Gehamat Shibaski.
A piece in The Brisbane Times described Shibaski as a “special talent” but the man is 26 and has played six NRL games for three clubs before the Broncos, and, well, Timoko is prime and will be eyeing him off like a peregrine falcon on a houbara bustard, if you will.
Brisbane’s halves, of course, have been excellent since 1983, the fullback’s capable of elite man-action and derring-do, and big wingman Selwyn Cobbo is quite the physical specimen, even if it often looks like he doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening to him.
Their front-rowers will shake so many abutments, firmaments, etc. And their backrowers and bench are solid enough.
But we can match and dispatch these people, the people. Believe it. And the Sydney media – the bastards – will continue to write us off and put it down to a bad night at the office for the Broncos, as it was for the Panthers, while writing up the flashy Sydney team’s glory as the story. How things roll.
And, as Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) said to himself as he sat in his girlfriend’s Honda just before crashing it in Pulp Fiction (1994), That’s how we’re gonna beat ‘em, Butch. They keep on underestimating ya.
So, boo, Sydney media and Brisbane Broncos and Accepted Wisdom from everywhere else.
Because Up The Milk!