What a bottler: Rapana stars as Raiders keep dream alive
Canberra Raiders remain 100-1 to win the 2021 Telstra Premiership but remain a footy side to be proud of. It hasn't always been the case this season. But they're back now, baby, and having a crack
Before the 28-14 win over New Zealand Warriors on Friday night, Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart declared himself “proud” to coach his posse of bad news bears.
“They’re a very courageous football team. That’s why I say I’m a proud coach, because when you can notice that in your performance and play, that’s when it all comes out and what type of character is in your squad,” Stuart said.
“I couldn't ask for a greater effort and energy than has been produced [at training and] in these last two games.”
You have to agree. Recent losses to Manly and Melbourne Storm weren’t because players didn’t have a go. It’s because Manly and Melbourne Storm are good! And better on the night, and all that. Doesn’t mean Canberra cannot beat them. Indeed, both games, bit of luck, they may have.
And that’s why you take 16.5 and 26.5 start respectively: because it’s a very rare day indeed in The Stuart Era that the XVII hasn’t at least given the appearance of having a red hot go.
Well, there were a few times this year. For about a month or two, say. Call it April through June…
For it was back in April in the first Parramatta game, a 35-14 loss at GIO Stadium, you could tell things weren’t creamy. They folded second half, the body language of delinquent teens on a dud excursion. I texted a mate: there’s something wrong.
Soon enough word came that George Williams was homesick and Josh Hodgson perplexed that criticism levelled at him by Stuart in-house had appeared to come word for word from the mouth of Paul Kent on NRL360 .
Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Coaches talk to journos all the time. They can be mates. Off-the-record stuff stays out of the papers and public consumption. The rest is unattributed to the source. And that’s what seems to have happened when Kenty appeared to effectively parrot Stuart’s critique of Hodgson’s play. Matt Dufty could tell a similar story at Anthony Griffin’s Dragons.
Just how things roll.
Anyway - Hodgson was pissed off and then Williams did, and the Raiders rolled into the middle of the season disaffected and lost by lots to Storm, Roosters, Rabbitohs and Titans (Titans! 44-6! at Bruce!) and by normal amounts to Dragons and Knights.
And then, the Manly game at Brookvale, the Raiders came back.
Leading the charge: Jordan Rapana. What is he on? Bottle it, quick. Quick experiment: before I check his numbers against the Warriors I’m going to posit he ran for 220 metres, made two line breaks and broke twenty tackles. Let me just nip off and check …
Close! Rapana, bless him, ran for a Taumalolo-esque 285m, made two line breaks and broke 12 tackles.
He also had a try-assist, kicked four goals and played the ball a game-high twenty times. His team knew: Keep giving it to Rapa. He doesn’t seem to get tired.
Oh, yes - he also scored the match-winning try.
"He tells me every week what he can do,” Stuart said. “And he's actually doing it, so I can't criticise him for it.
"He’ll love hearing this - I don't know if he looks at these press conferences – I just said to Matty Ford, our team manager, on the bench tonight: 'He amazes me, Rapa. He breaks a lot of tackles, he makes a lot of metres, but it’s all through effort and energy'.”
Word on the street - shout-out Tim Gore’s Twitter - is that the 32-year-old will be re-signed by the club some time soon.
Shout-out Don Furner: Make it happen, big man.
Shout-out, also, Corey Horsburgh, fresh back from a Belmore sabbatical, the worst kind of sabbatical. Dear old “Big Red” knocked the ball on twice in the second half causing coach Stuart to react with that classic head back and flying “Faaarrk!” expression, you know the one, I’ll dig up a picture here…
That’s the puppy. In a perfect world Pirtek, whoever they are, have it framed in the lobby of their corporate HQ.
In this rather imperfect world the great Big Red, nobody’s idea of Jack Wighton’s halves partner, made good with a wide ball that led to Rapana’s match-winner.
And so, the Raiders remain alive after a top-shelf, come-from-behind win that didn’t mask a lot of rather imperfect play. It’s just that their spirited if highly inept opposition remain a harder mob to follow than the gibbering troupes of Facebook epidemiologists advising Gladys Berejiklian.
How about them, the Warriors. Managed to out-fade the Faders. Lot of talent, as always. On paper you should fear them. But they are just … they just don’t get things done. As coach Nathan Brown said: “There’s a million things we could’ve done better.”
Next week’s assignment for the Raiders in the Stayin’ Alive Stakes, the Roosters, will be a different beast indeed. The Roosters, like their fellow hard-acres Melbourne Storm, make people pay for wanton excess.
Granted the Rabbitohs just put fifty on them and Joey Manu has a fractured cheekbone because Latrell Mitchell went all frothy red mist.
But it will, fact, be a super tough outing for the Green Machine given the Roosters - somehow, in the salary cap era, it’s really quite amazing - will trot out a reserve grade team that would’ve been running fourth on the NRL ladder had Parramatta Eels ($8.50) not beaten Melbourne Storm ($1.11).
As Sean Connery said in Highlander: It’s a kind of magic.
Canberra will need some to progress into the finals and that’s why bookmakers have declared them a nothing short of glorious 100-1 shot to win the 2021 Telstra Premiership. It sounds about right.
But as they say: where there is life there is something to bet on. And it would be a super-fun little stub to flaunt on the socials if the Raiders make an increasingly serious charge at the title as Wests Tigers did in 2005, as North Queensland Cowboys did without Johnathan Thurston in 2017, and as these very Canberra Raiders did on the road to the 1989 NSWRL premiership.
So there is that. Which is something.
Go well. Go the Raiders.
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Great news, he has been inspirational.