Raiders Smash Knights; Tiger Curry Coming
The NRL is a Melbourne Cup not a Golden Slipper. But Canberra Raiders made a statement against Newcastle Knights, and will further burnish credentials (if not respect among pundits) Saturday at GIO.
Well. Wasn’t that pleasing. For manifold reasons.
The Canberra Raiders 28-12 win over Newcastle Knights in front of 20-odd thousand (say it in your head like Ray Warren) Novacastrians proved that The House That Rick Built remains strong. The culture is good. There is bulk, and heft, and hard graft.
The off-season built on last season when the same people limped into the final rounds and with luck could’ve beaten Cronulla and Brisbane and those same Knights in extra time and sudden death, an outfit then the hottest posse bopping about.
Instead of luck there was injury and sin bins and suspension. What are you gonna do?
This: enjoy a very pleasing round one win. Largely because the prognostications of so many crystal ball gazers was that without Jack Wighton the Raiders were toast.
It proved that people, when talking of these our Canberra Raiders - and apologies but passions run high when you’re disdained or worse ignored - don’t take into account that rugby league is a game played by seventeen people each weekend.
Yes, again - it’s only one game. But people aren’t seeing the forest for the trees. A culture doesn’t change from September to March, as the Rabbitohs’ doesn’t appear to have. And the Raiders continue to be written off, as we ranted last week, despite going better than those Rabbitohs, along with ‘better’ teams such as Sea Eagles, Cowboys and Eels.
It’s madness. And when it infiltrates bookmakers, get on like Donkey Kong.
Consider Souths where our Jacky Boi’s gone. They missed the eight last year, they’ve now lost two on the trot. But they’re ‘Souths’, right? They’re a Sydney glamour club and the Accepted Wisdom is they’ll win. And they will, on occasion. But who do you think is giving you 80 minutes of graft? Who would you rather follow - show ponies or quarter-horses?
The Raiders worked their rings out against Newcastle. The defence in the middle was always going to be strong. But it was the work that shut down the Knights potent and aesthetically pleasing, even pretty, left edge which was … tops. Grouse, say. I was going to write revelatory but we know Matt Timoko can play. Yet his besting of Bradman Best went a long way to the win.
Elsewhere Ethan Strange, 19, withstood some rushing Knights ‘D’ and made 25 tackles, many of them front-on stoppers, and setup a try. The new guys Morgan Smithies of Halifax and Zac Hosking, Son of The Mule, once of Central Charlestown Butcher Boys, made sterling debuts, and celebrated the win with vigour.
And after all that bashing and harassing and competing at every play - they call it ‘Bellyache Ball’ but there’s plenty of Ricky Stuart in it, too - when the Knights said ‘Ni!’ and began to cough up ball, the Green Machine made them pay a super-profits tax with second-half tries to Danny Levi, Xavier Savage, Jordan Rapana, and my man, Hudson Young who was still hunting, running, playing all-body and top-class rugby league in the 79th minute.
In the first half, after Ponga had made a brilliant bust out of fullback and setup Tyson Gamble, Young barrelled into Captain Precious Melon and was sent to the Sin Bin. If it was anyone else but Naughty Hudson and oft-concussed Ponga - let’s say Nice Guy Hosking bumps into tough Phoenix Crossland - it’s incidental, off-the-ball contact. Penalty, maybe.
But if it’s Naughty Hudson Young on Pretty and Nice Kalyn then the bunker boys will edge forward in their padded gamers’ seats in Australian Technology Park in Eveleigh. And off for a hydralite Zooper-Dooper our Huddo went.
But as the saying goes, he couldn’t disappear. He was piss-bolting back in defence, and Ponga popped up in his way. He couldn’t avoid the contact, and bang - over goes Golden Bollocks.
It’s argued Young could have avoided bracing himself and smashing into Ponga in an aggressive fashion. But such is the nature of the scorpion who would sting the bullfrog and doom them both on a journey across a swollen river, Young, in that split second, decided to both protect himself and bash the Pinhead.
As Phil Kearns once said of playing the All Blacks - you’re not out there to be nice to them.
Young copped a $750 fine and thus is free to not be nice to Wests Tigers on Saturday afternoon at GIO Stadium. And if the Green Machine can maintain their aggression and work-rate, they should be too much for the perennial bottom-eight dwellers.
The Tigers have a borderline anonymous backline though Jahream Bula has a bit about him, saw him go 100 metres at Leichhardt Oval once, admittedly in reserves. They also trot out some starch up front with David Klemmer and Stefano Utoikamanu, and a bit of fancy-pants action from former Raiders man, crazy John Bateman of England.
Api Koroisau is a champion, up there with Harry Grant, for mine, as best nine. But Stuart will be sending all of our Clydesdales his way, and often, and Koroisau will make 50 tackles and play 70 minutes, and when he’s replaced it’ll be by a halfback, another former Green Man, Welcome Back Kotter, Aidan Sezar.
But there’s not a great deal of added potency in the ruck to take focus off Api, and Wests’ forwards don’t scream Resurrection of the ‘65 Dragons, though in fairness, few packs do.
Regardless, the Raiders, with Seb Kris back in the centres, will make stew, perhaps a nice jungle curry, of Wests Tigers at home on Saturday afternoon, and best them 28-10.
Up the Milk.
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In other news, have found a box of The Milk books after a garage clean-up, and were you to become a Paid Subscriber to this piece of work there’s a signed and posted copy of the book in your future.