Raiders to brutalise Dogs of War in bash-fest at Bruce
This top of the table clash has confounded Experts but Machine loyalists know: this young squad of devil-dogs just needed time to come good. They've had that time. And their time is now.
People of the Milk!
A glorious game-day to you, and how good is it. Not a question, rather asked rhetorically, as a statement: How good.
You know what I’m talking about.
See it: Sunday night, Suncorp Stadium, 79th minute, brutal game against the game’s premier brutalists, down by six points, Matty Nicholson goes to the line, pops a pure ball inside for a very good man for the occasion: Special Kaeo Weekes.
And as the fullback burst through the line of purple, did not, in that exact same moment, every last man jack one of us lift our buttocks off our seats and urge the man telepathically and quite vocally: GO!
Go, son. Go you bloody good thing.
And go he went, our K-Man, burning through the D-line, tearing into space, chipping the fullback, scorching around the man, burning him, getting the bounce in his fingertips and plunging over for a try Billy Slater would’ve enjoyed as a 20-year-old pup in Origin Two of 2004.
How about that. Again, not a question. Statement: How bloody about that. Hot skill, at speed, in the wet… friends, we are riding a wave.
We are riding lightning.
And today, at the stadia once known as “Bruce”, like he’s a mate from footy, or the pub, or an old drunk uncle, old drunk uncle Bruce, there cometh Canterbury Bulldogs, riding their own great wave of hope and glory.
And they’re formidable, the Dogs, and no argument, which is quite the trick given they have but three players I’d describe as marquee, that being Matt Burton, Viliame Kikau, and the skilful centre-man, Stephen Crichton.
Massively rate Crichton, reckon there’s shades of the great Mal Meninga about him, a man others will run out behind and do what he asks because of who he is. You could call it charisma, you could call it, as our Polynesian, Melanesian and Maori brothers and sisters might, mana, which an internet dictionary says is “an impersonal supernatural power which can be transmitted or inherited.”
Big Critter certainly transmits power, as Mal did. And our man Matty Timoko best be up and on him, a crucial match-up there, advantage Doggies, perhaps their only one in the backs, if you’re thinking simple head-to-heads, I can’t split ‘em.
But in the big units? We’ve got ‘em. We’re harder and better. And even without Corey Horsburgh, who was reportedly playing during the week before concussion ruled him out Thursday, this Green Machine has the measure of these people.
Because are they not fit as bejeezus, whoever bejeezus is, they just go and go and go, and they compete diamond-hard at every play, and they’re scrapping like tough kids at school, did you see Joe Tapine bait the boy Trent Loiero into the modern day version of a punch-up, the melee, and did we not win a penalty, on our line, as the Storm threatened to put us to the sword.
Tough stuff from the big man, and the belly of Storm coach Craig Bellamy was full of bile and toxic shock.
Or something I dunno, but he was very annoyed with Loiero, and did not the same fellow’s elbow cost them a field goal that saw them seven points in front with seven minutes to play … yet another rhetorical one, they appear to be a thing.
Regardless! Simi Sasagi’s named to start in the No.19, the only change from a unit that’s loving their work and winning from manifold positions, be it blowing people away (Eels, Warriors), or scrapping like devil dogs (Broncos, Sharks), or powering home over the top through superior fitness and game-day nous (Storm, Dolphins, Titans).
The Dogs today? Their defence has been outstanding … but they haven’t come across such rock-hard middles as Tapine, Tom Smithies and Josh Papali’i, nor such ball-busting penetrators, if you will, as Nicholson, Zac Hosking and Hudson Young who, I am tipping, will be right up for a scrap with the so-called Dogs of War, indeed get on Huddo for any time try-scorer, a series of brutal defensive efforts, and at least 10 minutes in the Bin.
Raiders by 10.
Up The Milk!