BY DAN
The Canberra Raiders 28-6 loss to the Newcastle Knights was the meek submission of an overwhelmed side. In a game they desperately needed to win they instead offered no intensity, no direction and no answers. They were pummelled in the middle by an unheralded pack. They were torn apart on the edges like a tiger with its favourite prey. To say nothing went right implies they tried things and it didn’t work out. This was a side that offered itself for slaughter. Their opposition obliged.

If the canary is still singing in this coal mine then they need to make the entire plane out of its lungs. This Raiders team were insipid. Uninspired. Exercising a collective expression of submission like they just found they had a new kink. They played like they were making small talk with distant relatives at a BBQ they were forced to attend as part of their relationship responsibilities. They didn’t look like they cared about their partner’s cousin’s uncle’s thoughts on crypto and they certainly didn’t look like they had any interest in fighting the Knights for the two points. This was a problem because Newcastle, coming off three victories and a recent rejuvenation that would make even the most hardened Adam O’Brien fans smile, were very interested in winning.

And so it meant Canberra had the shit kicked out of them. It started as these kinds of Raiders games do – with the middle getting it handed to them. The Milk’s big guys, so often a strength were manhandled and offered nothing on either side of the ball in the middle. At half time they’d been outgained by 300 metres, at full time 600. No Raider middle had over 50 metres at halftime. Only Tapine cracked 100 by fulltime (11 for 107m). Young was the only other forward over 100 metres and while he offered effort, it was a man flailing against inevitability. He may have been the best player in the side, which says a lot of how the side played.

In contrast Knights averaged 48 metres a set, careening down the field, able to roll through the middle against contact that was more akin to how I play-tackle my kids than human tanks try to stop each other. At halftime Canberra had practically the same amount of post-contact metres as their opposition, suggesting that the difference was as much how much space the Knights were eating up before they met the Raiders. It was driven by poor contact but also poor intensity and line-speed.

And, stop if you’ve heard this one before, but as soon as the middle was being so accommodating the edges were put in a position of solving problems they just aren’t equipped to. It was like watching a collective of men trying to work out what is meant by ‘fine’. They back-peddled when they needed to close space. They pushed up when they needed time. They even occasionally pulled together some good work, but such was the volume of questions they were asked they invariably slipped up.

As if to demonstrate just how much the collapse of the middle hurt, on each of the first two tries Elliott Whitehead was nowhere to be seen as the ball went through the hands through the Raiders right, because on the previous few tackles he’d been supporting the overburdened middle. On the final try Hudson Young and Jack Wighton were chasing the play as it went through and around Ata Mariota filling in because they’d been caught at the ruck solving a problem the play before. Given how everyone played it may not have mattered, but it was kinda like making an idiot do maths without a calculator – already ill-equipped, it just compounded the issue.

Kalyn Ponga toyed with the Raiders right edge defence, able to pick and choose where he wanted to run (he only had 196m, 6 tackle breaks, 2 line break assists, a try and somehow no try assists.) He burst through a kick chase early in a sign so ominous we all should have held off planting crops. Lachlan Fitzgibbon strolled through a gap between Joe Tapine and Jamal Fogarty on the first try, Ponga’s mere presence out the back leading Fogarty to take a step out before having to shift back in (too late). The irony not lost that Ponga then swept through to finish the movement.

It was an edge not cohesive and not operating decisively, perhaps no better demonstrated than watching Ponga sail a pass over a defence caught between coming in and holding out for the Knights second try. He was also involved in the third try heading to the other side, but that was simply ball going through the hands after the middle was unable to keep their part of the bargain. Even then Albert Hopoate should have been able to push Dom Young into touch – a feat he only just completed in similar circumstances in the second half.

In a sense it’s a minor miracle Newcastle only scored four times, and not in the last 39 minutes of the game. The score was of course driven by a surprising profligacy with the ball by the opposition. The Knights made fourteen errors, usually a statistic incongruent with winning games. But where Newcastle tried to give Canberra opportunities to get involved they were politely declined. We are such good hosts. Sixteen errors is almost impressive if it wasn’t so destructive.

The errors were frustrating but such was the deficit in impact in the middle, and so sterile was the resulting attack that they did almost nothing with the ball. The Knights barely had 15 tackles in the Raiders twenty all game, and came away with four tries. Last I saw the Milk had the best part of 35 tackles in the Newcastle red zone, and came away with one try. So much of sets was wasted trying to set up a single shot or sweeping movement. It was all predicated on winning the middle first. It’s not the only way. Smart footy can reverse the equation, opening up the middle by testing the edge. But Canberra are not that innovative (and have notable personnel challenges in testing teams consistently on the edge) and it could prove their undoing this season.

As might this defeat. The Raiders are in a struggle for the last remaining spots for the 8 and in this game they played like they were a spoon candidate. The problems that the Knights exploited in this game were hardly new. This was no exposition unmasking issues that we hadn’t seen before. This was all known from round one this season. All deficiencies that they’ve managed to overcome with excellence and luck in other areas of their game. But it wasn’t there in this one. Whatever work was done in the bye week has yet to bear fruit.

Perhaps the lesson is the Raiders can’t always run at full tilt and when they don’t then they can’t overcome their weaknesses. It’s hardly ‘building a contender 101’. It feels trite to say it, because we’ve said this all year, but if the Milk don’t find a way to fix their edge defence, to reduce their reliance on middle dominance, and to find a way to build a more sustainable style of football then the goodwill they’ve built will whither like they did in this game. It’s not a good story. There’s no way to sugar coat that. Even with a full steam-engine of effort they’re proving incapable of asserting dominance.

Without it though….ooft.

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