BY DAN

For months we’ve been waiting for the Canberra Raiders to show they care. In their 29-18 loss to the Brisbane Broncos they did just that, only it wasn’t enough. They raged, for Jarrod, for Jack and for their season, but it couldn’t overcome the structural weakness built into the side by its designer. So they lost a game in which they played as well as they have in months. This side will never make sense.

The Raiders simply couldn’t match the Broncos middle for much of the game. In a sense it’s as simple as that. It’s not a complicated formula adopted by Brisbane. They play tight to the ruck through the beginning of the set, destroy their oppositions ruck and drag the defence inwards to clean up the mess. At that point they have all the space they need to let Reece Walsh, Ezra Mam and the outside backs slice up the edges like Patrick Bateman listening to Huey Lewis.

It worked. The Green Machine couldn’t control the middle. The Broncos outgained them by near 600 metres. Haas, Jensen, Palasia, Flegler all cracked 150 metres each at 10 a pop. The middle defence battled but was too often breaking, offering quick rucks or worse as the defence was forced to scramble to cover for the outcomes. You’ve heard this story before. The opposition punched down the door and then spread chaos through the realm. Combined with Canberra’s own tendency to give away late-set penalties and set-restarts, it meant those brilliant Broncos backs got too much ball in good field position. Walsh targeted Matt Frawley like a high school bully, repeatedly using his pace to get outside the five-eighth, create an overlap and force his outside defenders into difficult decisions.

On the first try the Raiders edge tied up tight, if a little slowly, in the face of Walsh’s overlap, only to see him sail a perfect ball over their turning heads. That was the worst thing that could have happened, as it meant that both Kris and Wighton kept their eyes outside the ball for the rest of the game. Four more tries followed. Jack came in to help and created gaps outside him that led to tries for Staggs (when Kris didn’t follow him in), or Cobbo (when Kris did, or wasn’t there because he was playing fullback as Rapana was in the bin). For the last try Jack completed the set, staying out and Walsh strolled past Frawley to end the scoring and the fleeting hopes of Canberra fans. It proved what we knew all along – Frawley was no match for Reece Walsh. Who is?

There was plenty of people to blame, and none of it was related to effort. This was a structural weakness, a risk taken, and problem created, by a coach desperate to inject offensive cohesion. A well-established defensive grouping would have a hard time dealing with such a (im)perfect match. One put together while Coach Stuart dealt with the consequences of his afternoon coffee didn’t have a hope. Both Kris and Wighton appeared indecisive at points, incohesive at others. One may ask Stuart why now? One may also ask why Frawley, when it would put his side at such a clear disadvantage. All that matters now is the outcome, and it wasn’t pretty.

It’s a shame because it was the best Canberra looked with the ball for ages. It wasn’t perfect. They wasted too many tackles early in red-zone sets with crash balls and hoping and waiting to throw to anything resembling a shift. At one point they had 21 tackles in the opposition twenty for one try, 16 tackles in a row for zero points.

But particularly in the first half they started to play more enterprising football that recognised the strengths and weaknesses of their player personnel, that wasn’t just slow shifts or crash balls. It was simple and direct, asking halves and edge attackers to test the edges inside the jamming defence by straightening, either through work with the ball or their lines off it. This often involved continuing to use Elliott Whitehead, poking his head through the line as a fulcrum to run lines off, a recognition that the old-timer can’t break the line, but still has the ball-playing ability to set up the strong runners like Timoko and Cotric outside him. Two tries came from this, one to Frawley comically running a line normally preferred by fullbacks, inside-out line behind a shift to the right.

The second was Woolford and Rapana both spotting numbers (and a prop at A defender) on the weakside. Woolford showed his body to the fat side, and Rapana attacked the slower A defender, creating the overlap and putting Smell over a legs tackle from a winger who popped a pass to Cotric into space. A third try came when Fogarty stepped past a shooting defender to dump a ball to Hudson Young running a great outside-in line, and then immediately turning inside out to run past Walsh.

It was pleasing to see but Canberra barely got a chance to build on it after the Young try. Such was the inability of the big men to consistently win rucks and momentum that it forced the Milk into a constant battle with the halfway line. Of the Raiders forwards only Tapine cracked 100 on the ground (though Papalii would have had he got more opportunities to take carries – he ended with 9 for 96m, 46 post contact). For all his occasionally useful carries Emre Guler was a liability in defence, and Ata Mariota wasn’t much better, getting exposed (again) in any goal-line defensive situation that requires him to show lateral agility. More importantly the Green Machine sputtered unless Tapine, Horsburgh or Papalii was beating the door down (and even when they were).

They spent the entire second half battling to get out of their own half. They had two tackles in the opposition half near twenty minutes in the second stanza. Whereas Canberra’s physical defence and the Broncos willingness to give the ball back to them had garnered them field position in the first half, the opposition weren’t so friendly post-break and some frustrating errors (such as Seb Kris’ failure to catch a short drop out, and some odd refereeing decisions (such as ruling Hudson Young imepded Selwyn Cobbo, or Hudson Young wasn’t spear-tackled or…) compounded the matter. Without winning the middle the Raiders had to graft, and they were doing their best to hold on and wait for better times.

And then Jordan Rapana was sin-binned. The merits of the matter aside, Canberra could ill afford the situation. In a game where they couldn’t hold the middle and didn’t have enough numbers to fix the edges it turned a tough ending into a limp one. The Raiders strived but now any missed tackle resulted in chaos, and the Milk’s edges, already unable to solve problems at full strength were helpless.

If Canberra could bottle the energy and intent they played this game with it would serve them well next week, and if they play finals it will be a given. But as heartening as it was to see such quality from the Milk, the limitations on this side remain. They are still unable to come up with a plan B when they don’t win the middle. They still drag defensive weakness into each game like intergenerational trauma.

These are issues that can’t be solved by trying harder. That’s what Canberra offered in this game. They came with the energy. They came with the fight. They gave 110 per cent, full credit to everyone, never gave up, never surrendered etc etc. Shout your favourite slogan at them because they embraced them all. What undermined them was built into this side long before this day, a fact proven by Stuart’s willingness to throw his cards in and hope the shuffle would fix his woes. Energy can’t fix what’s broken.

But it can help cover for it. I like this version of the Raiders much more than the confusing mess that bumbles its way to victory. There’s still hope this season and a game like this shows Canberra thinks so too. Hold on. There’s at least one more week of this ride to go.

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