Raiders to make sweet Phin soup of competition new chums
Following their defeat of the Roosters in their debut match at Suncorp Stadium, bookmakers have kept the Dolphins safe in a two-horse war with Canberra Raiders. We say: we'll take a bit of that.
$1.60? Really?
Friends, hear this: take the Raiders in the two-horse war with Dolphins and anchor it in a multi with Roosters (over Warriors) and Storm (Bulldogs) and throw in a favourite at Flemington you could get $10 with a boost from reputable makers of sports book, and by Sunday afternoon won’t have to pay for pizza nor beer.
Fact.
Not a fact. Who can tell? It’s the future, like the kid John Connor said in Terminator II, it’s not set. That’s why Cyberdine Systems kept sending killer robots back to kill him and his mum, and whoever else, you’d think if they’d sent the T1000 back to the 1850s and killed a great-great-great-grandfather they’d have found less resistance.
But I do fancy the Raiders at $1.60 against Redcliffe Dolphins. For mine we’re $1.10. You wonder what games people watch.
Yes, Dolphins beat Roosters in a marvellous first match, passionate and pumped in front of a belter of a crowd at Suncorp. But it’s not like they channeled the ‘92 Broncs at the old Lang Park. They just ran hard, tackled hard, didn’t drop the ball and iced the cake at the end. That’s called ‘playing footy’.
The Chooks, meanwhile, played shit footy. Worst game they’ve played since round 5 of 1990 when the Raiders pumped them 66-4 in a rout for the ages with tries to Mal Meninga 5, John Ferguson 3, Gary Belcher, Mark Bell, Laurie Daley and Ricky Stuart, and Meninga toe-poking 9 goals from 12 attempts for a record-breaking personal haul of 38 points.
After that match I was heading home in the car, slowly, out of the carpark, as one did, with Hollywood and Zorba on the radio, all the games were played same time, 3pm on Sunday, you’d get all the scores, and a listener rang in and suggested that the score didn’t reflect how well the Roosters had played.
And that guy was less deluded than bookmakers who’ve kept the Dolphins safe at $2.35.
Consider: our guys were nigh-on parity with North Queensland Cowboys who have a red-hot best XVII and are one of 6-7 genuine premiership favourites in as even an NRL competition as one can recall.
Now, gamble responsibly, knowing over time on the punt that you’ll lose and that having a bet is like a recreational spend like going to the movies. Better yet don’t do it at all and just enjoy watching the game. And take this tip with so many grains of Rhodesian rock salt given I all-upped Rabbitohs, Eels and Cowboys this weekend.
But line up our guys head to head with their guys, and our guys win five games in six.
Fact.
Not a fact, etc.
Granted! They’ll be running out onto a sold-out home ground with Phin fans roaring from the rafters.
They also have a gnarled old alchemist-in-chief in Wayne Bennett who got his new chums flying out of the blocks. They looked good, the Dolphins, you couldn’t help but exalt for them and their people.
But our guy with the clipboard is more competitive than the US dollar and doesn’t get on fabulously with Supercoach Wayne, and will be impressing upon his charges not to take any shit from the new chums. And indeed to step upon their throats, making sure to take Hudson Young aside and explain that he means metaphorically.
Regardless, I am extremely confident.
Let’s begin with dear Huddo. He’ll rumble with Felice Kaufusi and Kenneath Bromwich, two of the toughest, gnarliest Storm boys Bellyache blew shit into.
I still fancy Huddo. Kid’s cray-cray. And extremely good. And doesn’t care for reputations. I still miss John Bateman and it will be bad to see him in Tigers’ strip. But the boy Hudson has the same confidence and point of difference. He doesn’t do normal, expected, rote.
Big units? Joe Tapine will be all in against Jarrod Wallace and Jesse Bromwich who play 30 minutes each given their combined age is 64. Pasami Saulo threw his big body around last week and showed enough to indicate why Stick picked him to start over Emre Guler. Big game for Pasami coming up against some NRL hard-heads.
Elliott Whitehead and Corey Harawira-Naira form a potent three-prong backrow with young Young, and can play on the edges or up guts. And we win it somewhere, I reckon, through the creativity and nark of these people. It’s a cracking backrow. Big minutes. Big impact.
Our halves - Jack Wighton and Jamal Fogarty - are more capable of kicking the ball to the right areas of the ground and evoking fear in big forwards than Sean O’Sullivan and Isaiya Katoa, a 19-year-old one assumes Wighton, Hudson and Corey Horsburgh, say, will be testing the defensive steel thereof.
Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow has some lightning in his feet and does Jamayne Isaako. Their other winger is 21-year-old Tesi Niu who is so anonymous he’d crash Google looking for him.
Still, it’s probably advantage Phins in the back three given Albert Hopoate’s our reserve wingman, and Seb Kris is out of position in the number one. And they’ll bomb them both like Beirut. Interesting to see if Kris’s job description is to have a crack or keep it tight. I fear for the potency of our back three.
We’re well up in the centres, however, where Matt Timoko and Harley Smith-Shields can frustrate the poor man’s Lee, Brenko Lee, a man who’s played more clubs than the Radiators, and Euan Aitken, a second-rower who was let go by St George Illawarra.
Lee reminds of The Kurgen in Highlander. There can be only one. But Brenko aint it.
Aitken reminds of a block of wood that is used to chop other blocks of wood.
Neither man, you’d suggest, possesses the creativity of Roald Dahl who was in the news because someone wanted to change the Umpa-Lumpas from pigmies, or something I dunno, it’s exhausting this stuff.
Regardless! Not something the great man Ricky ‘Sticky’ Stuart will be concerning himself with as he lazes by the pool on the Sunshine Coast this morning, quietly confident that our XVII is better than their XVII, and that if we cut out errors, get a fair shake from the referee and the bunker, kick and chase like devil-dogs, get enough ball in good territory, pressure their puppy halves, bash Kaufusi and the Bromwich boys, and enjoy the day out at a heaving and sold out suburban ground, then it’ll be pizza and beer for all on Sunday!
Up The Milk!