Us and Them: Why the Raiders beat Knights, and many others, in ever surprising season 2024
The Canberra Raiders will: beat Newcastle Knights tonight, run 6th on the ladder and plunge deep into the finals series of the 2024 Telstra Premiership. Most don't believe it. Their loss. Literally.
AS the great sage Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) says in the hit film of 1994 Pulp Fiction after returning to his flat to collect his grandaddy’s golden war-watch before shooting Vincent Vega (John Travolta) on the toilet as his toaster beeps and shoots up a Pop-Tart, “That’s how you’re gonna beat ‘em, Butch. They keep underestimating you.”
As it was for the boxer who reneged on an agreement with Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) and crashes his Honda before the pair are captured by Maynard (Duane Whitaker) and tortured quite rudely by Zed (Peter Greene), Butch escaping but returning to free Marcellus with a samurai sword and thus repaying his debt as Marcellus prepares to get medieval upon Zed whom he describes as “Mr soon to be living the rest of his short-assed life in agonising pain", so it is for these, our Canberra Raiders, who head into season 2024 and tonight’s first round fixture against Newcastle Knights underestimated, written off and, gloriously for those who might wager upon such things with makers of sports books, over the odds.
Big overs. The best kind of overs.
YES! The People! We’re back, you’re mad, we’re black, something something, for season 2024 and, as ever, the Accepted Wisdom promulgated by Sydney press and spread like viral meningitis around the electronic tendrils of this insidious if very convenient world wide ‘web’ of computer servers is that no Jack Wighton, no hope for Canberra Raiders.
Gone, baby, gone. Limped into the finals. Minus 137 points difference. Better than Sea Eagles, Rabbitohs, Cowboys and Eels but let’s not let that cloud our judgement when formulating one’s 2024 top-eight with the Raiders nowhere near it. Maybe 12th. Give ‘em 12th.
It’s like people forget it’s a team game. Like they forget Ricky Stuart has forged steel, has built a culture of graft and commitment, has imbued his people with the potent brew of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’. He’s made boogie men of Them. Those bastards, we’ll show Them.
And all that. It’s a powerful Thing. True story. People vote for Pauline Hanson because of it.
People look at the Raiders limping into the finals in 2023 (and forget they almost beat hot Knights in Newcastle in a compelling knock-out final) and think that means 2024. The Venn diagram of the same people, however, will put Cowboys, Sea Eagles, Rabbitohs and Eels - because they’re Cowboys, Sea Eagles, Rabbitohs and Eels, presumably - above Canberra.
Don’t get angry. Get overs! Gamble responsibly, of course. But get on, head and heart. Win tonight. Top-eight. Whatever you like.
No team, not even Penrith, magically win games because they have good players. The Rabbitohs showed us that, and even with Our Jack, it’s still a team game, peeps. It’s about your system. And the Raiders have a good one.
The starting forward pack, you’d back against anyone: Joe Tapine, Josh Papalii, Hudson Young, Corey Horsburgh, Elliott Whitehead … have people not seen them play? Have they not amassed a widely respected body of work? Why do they become lesser because they train south of Goulburn?
Zac Hosking was great in the trials after years learning things at Penrith. Hohepa Puru has a little bit of freak in him. There’s excitement about the New Pom Morgan Smithies. And Pasami Saulo is ready to bust out amongst the beast-masters of this man’s National Rugby League. He and Taps, Big Red and Big Papa, four hit-ups a set, that’s a powerful four-prong Panzer attack. Something.
But this: Hold the ball, learn the whims of the referees, try to stay on the field - Hudson, Corey, lookin’ at you, champions - and there is pain to be dished out by this phalanx of professional whack merchants.
Believe it. Take the overs.
Don’t mind who plays nine. Like to see Danny Levi with an extended go and big minutes, but Tom Starling and Zac Woolford, you know what you’re getting. It’s not Steve Walters or Cameron Smith, and for mine Harry Grant’s the best nine bopping about. But all three ‘rakes’ (bad handle, should be more like tackling halfback) will tackle, scheme and sling soft pill from dummy-half good as anyone.
Jamal Fogarty? The poster boy of underestimation. An invisible man who led the Raiders to a 20-14 win over Brisbane in Brisbane. And you know who didn’t play that game? Jack motherlovin’ Wighton.
Admittedly the Broncos won 29-18 in Canberra in August but Kotoni Staggs wasn’t sent off in the 17th minute for a flying elbow to a prone player’s head which rather affected the result. I know, that’s footy, there’s swings and roundabouts. But Jeez! What are they looking at in that bunker in Waterloo. He got two weeks, didn’t even go the Bin.
Anyway - Fogarty is a gun, a seven good as any of them for game-management. He can scamper, he can tackle, he can kick the ball like it’s shot out a cannon. And he is in the prime of his 30-year-old athletic life.
Which of the bucks they put with him - Ethan Strange has first dibs, Kaeo Weekes will get a crack - will be a subtext of the season, just as who of Xavier Savage or Chevy Stewart wears the number one when Jordan Rapana doesn’t. So we’ll see. Coach Rick seems to have a thing for ‘protecting’ the kids from the glare of the NRL - don’t reckon he’d play Dragons barn door Tyrell Sloan, for instance.
The outside backs and centre three-quarters - Seb Kris, Nick Cotric, Albert Hopoate, James Schiller, the hot-footed scamp Matt Timoko - you know what you’re getting. But you also don’t, because they’ll be better than they were.
Because this: they’ve all been ripping into one another at Braddon in that hotly competitive training mode known as The Way of The Rick. And with a decent off-season, given that it’s part of our human condition, these people will ‘improve’. Their cells will multiply, their synapses will trigger more quickly, and they will be better at rugby league than they were.
People forget this. They underestimate the human capacity for growth. And it will cost them dearly with makers of sports book.
Because we beat the Knights tonight. We run 6th in 2024. And we go deep, baby, deep, into the finals series of this man’s Telstra Premiership.
Believe it.
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IN OTHER NEWS …. cleaned up the garage the other day and came upon a box of 30 copies of The Milk, a book about 40 years supporting these our Canberra Raiders. And if you’d like a copy they’re $30 including postage, and I’ll sign it and write something nice. DM me here, is a thing I believe can be done.
Or … sign on as a Subscriber and you’ll get a book, access to our back catalogue, and fresh stuff that Free Subscribers will be unhappy not to. Believe it. Or not, it’s probably bullshit anyway. But! The Milk, the book, if you’ve come this far, reckon you’ll like it.