BY DAN

Measuring the success of the Canberra Raiders 2023 season is hard. More than just the end of an era it feels like a missed opportunity. After a 2022 that promised an upwards trajectory the Raiders instead stagnated, all fire and fury with no progress. An engine out of gear revving in search of traction. The dreams of the current cohort are over and the task moves to building with a new generation. All that we know about what the future looks like is that things must change to get better.

How did they not build on 2022’s platform? It started in the off-season, with no addition or new source of input for the side. The major additions were Danny Levi and Pasami Saulo. Regardless of my views of Levi’s signature Coach Stuart’s vision for him was never realised due to injury. Saulo was meant to fill gaps, not change trajectories. So if they were going to build on 2022 it was going to take getting more from what they had.

But they didn’t. Instead they were forced to scrap and scrape to get to the same level. Partly this was driven by the hole they found themselves early on. At one win and four losses and a destruction at the hands of the Panthers they needed to win, no matter what. They did that over the next few months, taking ten of twelve games and getting into a position where a top four finish was a possibility, at least in terms of their ladder position. But the desperation it took them to right the ship became their only defining feature. They never progressed beyond a ‘backs to wall’ as a strategy. Even into the finals series this was all they had.

What was borne out of necessity early in the season became how the Raiders played. Conservative football, attempting to grind the game into an old-fashioned war between forward packs. The hope was obvious – the Milk have good forwards, a less than perfect connection to the rest of the team. Maybe we just bash so many teams in the face and hope that god sorts the rest out? 

20.6 points a game was poor this season, and even worse in comparison with recent vintages. They were near two points a game worse than last year’s similarly anaemic version, a team that played a rookie at halfback for the first half of the season, and only discovered a starting hooker by accident a third of the way through the season (and to that point were averaging just 14 points a game).

You can see it in the stats. 4th in total dummy-half runs. 2nd in the league in one-pass hit ups. Last in line-engagements, last in general-play passes. This was a side that kept it tight and close to the ruck, tried to kick the door in and had little else to offer. Even within the parameters of that style of play they were too conservative – they only had the 7th most offloads, reflecting the fact that even within a one-out style of play they were keeping their one path to a bit of excitement surprisingly underutilised.

This style didn’t create the foundations of success. They were 15th in average run metres, meaning they weren’t getting in to positions to score often. They had the lowest line-breaks in the league on a per game basis, meaning they weren’t even able to make up for poor field position with creative play. 9th in tackle breaks per game, less than the Tigers and disproportionately caused by Matt Timoko being 6th in the league in that stat, and doing most of his damage in yardage work rather than open play. It should surprise no one they had the second fewest try-assists, or scored the 13th most points. This wasn’t an attack that caused concerns for their opposition.

No better was this displayed than in their anaemic red zone attack. They were second in the competition in number of times tackled in the opposition twenty. 31 tackles a game there for 20.25 points a game (for comparison, the Knights averaged 26 points a game on 25 red zone tackles). They relied on a league leading goal-kicking rate (87 per cent, one of three teams in the 80s) to make up for the fact they had the least efficient offence in the competition. You saw it, it wasn’t pretty.

Normally a team like this would make up with a brilliant defence. If you’re not going to score a heap, you find just enough points and make the opposition work even harder. But the Raiders weren’t that side either. They were worse in defence, giving up 26 points a game on average. It was near six points a game worse than 2022, near two points a game worse than their disaster with Vlandoball in 2021, a full 10 points worse a game than the team that went to the grand final in 2019 (that is so big that I still don’t believe it and I checked it twice).

This was unquestionable a poor. They conceded the 6th most points combined and the 7th most line breaks, the latter proof the former wasn’t a fluke. They conceded the 6th fewest run metres, but combining that with the 4th most penalties, it suggested that that oppositions didn’t have far to travel. 2nd fewest offloads would be an indicator of good contact for a side that had more defensive prowess. As it is we can only assume that’s proof that teams weren’t interested in trying to beat them through the middle, instead shifting wider safe in the knowledge that it was an easier, more productive, approach.

A poor attack and a worse defence was not a formula for success. Instead they triumphed almost through memory. Jordan Rapana, Joe Tapine, Jamal Fogarty. These were veterans often doing it themselves, imperfectly seeking to make a flawed system functional. Rapana thrived at fullback not because he was a good option but because he had enough experience to make it work and the audacity to do what no one else was thinking. Fogarty, a career-long game manager and honest footballer was forced to be more and become the dominant creator in a team without them (a team leading 16 try assists and 30 try involvements and 11 try contributions). Tapine had another otherworldly year, averaging 155 metres a game, but was still relied on too much for a team with so much talent in the middle.

If there was a disappointment from the veteran class it came from Jack Wighton. There’s always been a story that Jack is rocks and diamonds, but really it was more he always had non-traditional ways of impacting the game for the better. This year his impacts were profoundly negative. He hampered the attack, both getting more ball than he could productively use, but also wasting what he got. I honestly don’t remember Jack having so many games where I thought the team would be better without him. 36 errors was far and away the most for the Raiders, 4th in the league and reminiscent of the worst days of Jack at fullback. Jarrod Croker was moved in next to him for a host of reasons, but part of that was Toots’ ability to understand Wighton and manufacture a seemingly functional edge attack with him.

If you need proof that Jack was all at sea this year you only need to see it in the range of roles he was given by Coach Stuart in search of one that didn’t hurt the club. For years people asserted he was best placed as a centre, only for the ‘hit and miss’ aspects of his defensive approach to be exposed by both Reece Walsh and Kalyn Ponga. A step or two inside and there’s less space for him to be exploited. At centre he got burned by both. There were reports the club tried to get him to play fullback, which seemed weird but indicative of trying to remove him from primary ball-playing responsibilities. He also was shifted to ball-playing lock in the Dragons game, before Stuart’s idiotic pairing of Matt Frawley and Croker proved too much.

There were other positive contributors among the younger and emerging players but they were unable to overcome the malaise they were put in. Matt Timoko proved himself a weapon, though one simultaneously relied on too much and not enough. He did so much yardage work, and when the ball came his way he was often given the responsibility of finding a way through with little or not help from the structure or the people around him. It was a lot to ask of a player so early in his career, but he’ll be even better next year.

Corey Horsburgh started to show what he was, a man with an unending motor, capable of important linking and metres between teh tram lines. But at times he felt like the only defender in the middle – he either had the most or second most tackles in the team (lord explain to me how NRL.com says he made 855 tackles and Fox thinks it was 753), and with Elliott Whitehead and Hudson Young was one of the defenders constantly asked to do the work of others. He can have more impact on the offensive end if someone helps him in defence. Hudson Young was similarly asked to do too much, and that he still had a quality year speaks to the talent at his disposal.

If there’s a plus in all this it’s that the Raiders never gave up. Ricky Stuart is a complex character but one cannot question the spirit he imbues in this side. It’s the foundational basis for a good team – they have to believe, they have to be willing to work and not shirk their task. That’s how the Raiders managed the success they did. But if anyone has thoughts of a side of
more than piss and vinegar then these players needed to be put in a better position to succeed.

Genuine questions should be asked of the entire coaching staff. Mick Crawley has now had two years at the helm of an offence that at best has been mediocre. Madge Maguire, a potential future head coach of the club has been in charge of a defence this year that was the worst in years. And the next person that suggests Head Coach Ricky Stuart has a plan to solve either mess will be the first. But they’ve already done a clear out (as recently as last offseason) so
suggesting personnel changes is potentially premature, and at worst destabilising to a side already undergoing change.

It should be an exciting time. While there is change there is also plenty of potential in this squad. Regardless of whether they are there, the answers are being sought in-house but I remain unconvinced as to whether the house is capable of making the best of them. Stuart has flagged a youth movement, which from him feels like an excuse for a coming depression than a plan for return the club to contending. The small glimpse of sunlight is that perhaps with the
departure of the past might provide space for different approaches in the future. Perhaps the club can match the fury with a better way to play. Perhaps the departure of Jack is what it will take for Stuart to build a more functional team.

There’s plenty of ways to make 2024 work. We all have our views about which hooker, how to better utilise the bench, what might come of the search for six, Xavier Savage, Hohepa Puru and a host of other issues. Canberra now have a long time to think about them. There’s still sacred cows still built into this unit, but now it’s less, and there’s undoubtedly more flexibility to fit a new system to a different talent profile. I hope the coaching staff has the necessary ambition.

But for this vintage the end came with a battle fought across 2023 with every inch of their collective being, just without the strategy or structure to succeed. They spent so much of the year trying to outrun their demons, outwork their flaws. It was painfully obvious from a long way out that their were limits to this approach. But out of sheer desire, pride and if I can project, a
craving to make sure that champions left if not basking in glory, then at least not in shame, they raged on. It was a fitting end of an era. Now a new chapter begins.

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BY DAN