BY DAN

With mere minutes to go in last Friday’s game the Canberra Raiders set up for a field goal.

They were doing so because they had given up an three-try lead in a chaotic five minutes of football. Their opposition had scored on a trifecta of awful defensive sets and the goodwill (and points buffer) that Canberra had built up over the previous 70 minutes had disappeared. Suddenly they needed a field goal just to keep the game alive.

For the second time all year they actually organised their set effectively to achieve this end, setting up halfback Jamal Fogarty for a makeable shot. As his shot pushed wide-right that sick habit of giving up leads seemed like it would cost the Milk. Thousands of Raiders fans’ hearts sunk. Thousands of weekends seemed in ruins. Thousands of remotes were being picked up, either to change the channel and avoid

Then like some unbelievable sports movie the referee offered a reprieve. A Wests player had hit the legs of Fogarty. It was a black-and-white penalty, no matter what the broken souls of Tigers twitter will tell you. That it came after Fogarty had missed was only relevant in the sense it gave the full scope of the Milk’s luck. If Isiah Papali’i hadn’t hit his legs it wouldn’t have made an ounce of difference. The kick was missing. The Raiders still got the gift.

It was lucky. As Fogarty later noted:

To be honest, it feels like we lost. We got very lucky in the end. For them, it’s so heartbreaking but for us it’s a bit of a relief. We escaped there.

Jamal Fogarty here

It’s not the first time Canberra have had a bit of luck on 2023. Their record is 6-2 in games decided by less than six points this year. In games they’ve led by 18 points or more their record is 2-0 with a points differential of plus two. When leading by 14 or more that record is 4-0, but with a points differential of +10 (shouts to the King Jack Cronin for those stats). They simply cannot win easily.

Even in those wins they’ve required a bit of fortune. If you witnessed them try and fail to set up for a field goal against their win against the Dolphins you witnessed chaos, poor planning and ruck service worse than given by a hungover waiter at your favourite Sunday brunch. It took several attempts and in the end what may have been a fortuitous decision to ignore Hudson Young’s forearm. Against the Dragons they desperately tried to give the game away, and it required a Young 80m steal-and-go try to be the difference.

Pythagorean win expectations is a analytic tool initially developed for baseball to determine how many wins would normally be expected from a given amount of runs scored. To oversimplify it measures variation from that, in an attempt to ascertain how much ‘luck’ is involved in a given team’s success. Before their wins over the Bunnies and the Tigers by a combined 8 points, the Raiders were already near two games (1.7 to be precise) ahead of where they should be according to the Maroon Observer (if you don’t sign up for that newsletter then we can’t be friends). Essentially they were a 4-7 team masquerading as a 6-5 team. Now they’re 8-5 and given they’ve won two games by a total of 8 points I doubt that 1.7 number is much smaller (indeed according to the Maroon Observer that number is now 2.5).

It’s safe to say Canberra have outperformed their expectation (both in analytics and narrative). That’s marked change from their historical norm, at least when it comes to numbers. Almost every other year the Milk are on the other side of that ledger, inexplicably two wins below the marker (except last season where their 14 wins was bang on). So either the Raiders are just that much better in close games than other teams, or a bit of luck is involved.

And for sure Canberra has had their share of luck. The penalty on Friday is a clear marker. The multiple set ups against the ‘Phins. The Bulldogs and Dragons games both had their elements. These were games were decidedly 50-50 things happened that the Raiders were able to capitalise on. But this isn’t the whole story, and when we dig into the nuance it’s actually a more helpful way to understand how they’re going, and how they can build on the good fortune.

For starters the degree of Canberra’s overperformance is inflated by two singular debacles (against the Panthers and Manly) that turned their points differential redder than Corey Horsburgh reading the Communist Manifesto. While suggesting removing the two worst performances and then calculating defeats the purpose of trying to use analytics to understand luck and performance, it’s worth noting that sample sizes at this stage of the season are still heavily influenced by such outings.

Normally a bunch of wins would eat those points differentials up over time. But for a range of reasons that hasn’t occurred. The major culprit is the achilles heal of Canberra’s defence this year. Their are a host of weakeness in that defence. An overreliance on a few middles means the ruck defence can fatigue in second halves. The relative weakness of their edge defence (not to mention some unfortunate personnel changes) has also been a problem. The weakness of this defence means that the Milk often has a high-water mark for victories. Games are close because they have to maximise their offence to win. Instead of grinding out a few defensive stops on Friday they conceded points on four straight sets.

Another contributor has been the hyper-targeted injury issues they’ve faced. Canberra’s edge defence is weak but they’ve also lost two of their three edge forwards to injury, playing Corey Horsburgh out there for multiple weeks. Horse is amazing and has done an unbelievable job given the circumstances. But he’s not a backrower and this has not only weakened the Milk’s middle defence (his motor would have been invaluable in the middle on Friday) but also has put a target on the side of defence most NRL teams love to shape towards.

If Canberra have been lucky to get where they are they’ve also scrapped and battled to earn those victories. And while their defence has kept other teams in games the performance of their pack has kept them in as many. It’s fair to say this is an elite group, and when that aspect of your game is so good, it’ll keep you in as many games as your defence might jeopardise.

Does this overperformance mean Canberra are on borrowed time? Will this ‘luck’ eventually catch up, as the ‘bounce of the ball’ reverts to the mean? As anyone who pays attention to these things will tell you it’s hard to say. Every season there’s a team that outperforms their points differential by some margin. There’s always a team that gets on a run and continues to manufacture victories. Sometimes it’s chance, sometimes it’s the nature of humans, confidence and groupings that are willing to truly find every edge they can for one reason or another. There are intangibles that don’t show up in points differential or any other statistic that do in wins and losses. The hard bit is trying to differentiate and identify them (duh, that’s why they’re intangible) and therefore replicate them week to week.

All Canberra can do is keep winning. Luck can be infectious and the knowledge that you’ve been there before, and succeeded, can be enough to keep even the most ardent artifices of fate at bay. Next up the Warriors are coming to town for Jarrod’s 300th. They’re a very good team who’s record right now doesn’t befit the quality of footy they’ve been playing behind a very effective pack, an elite half, and outside backs who are performing well above their perceived talent. It’s a long trip for the Kiwis. Let’s hope it’s an unlucky one.

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