BY DAN
The best moment of 2023 didn’t happen on the field but rather in the process of getting there.
Jarrod Croker’s run to 300 had for so long seemed a fait accompli. He had age on his side. He was a leader with guile, grace He did his job on the field and off it. It wasn’t so much a question of cracking the milestone but more whether he could go forever, challenge Cam Smith’s points record and have his name etched where it deserved to be etched – alongside the greatest to do ever do it. Not just for the club but for the game.
Previous Best Moments of the Year:
The best laid plans hey? Injuries on injury. Frustration on frustration. Pain on pain. What had seemed inevitable became involuted, a path turned on itself, always ending up at the same point: with Croker saying he wanted to play on to 300, with Ricky saying he wasn’t sure his body was up to it (and implying that the yard of pace he’d lost had been critical) and with all of us just wanting a club legend to leave the party at the time of his choosing.
When Jarrod was named to play his 300 against the Warriors it gave permission for a celebration. It was of the milestone but it also wasn’t. We were cheering because the bumpy road had been survived. Because we knew this season would likely be the last chance it would happen. Because Jarrod deserved more but the honor was all we could give him. He had given everything to the club and gotten plenty in return but never enough. It might have been the only time in existence where Ma’at’s feather had seemed far too heavy.
The decision to make it at home had been the kind of amateur hour that only the distance and favour from the big media sources can allow (and they almost didn’t, both in nearly capitulating against the Tigers and in the meagre criticism it attracted hurting Coach Stuart’s sensitivities). In a sense it was indicative of a year where rationalisations and justifications ran roughshod over home truths. Of a club, as ABC League writer and man about town Nick Campton has often said, driven by the heart instead of the head. But it also felt right, even if the reasons felt more like the kind we come up with hungover to explain why we did that thing we shouldn’t have done. It was also appreciated and needed. I’m sure by Jarrod, but also by people like me and you who travelled around the country to be *home*; that shared idea that the familiarity and family of Bruce can offer (shouts to my dudes that had booked to go to Leichardt. You are not forgotten in this mess).
Walking out on to the ground, with family in tow, to as thunderous applause as the stadium who’s design matches its spread-out city can muster, was a culmination. It was 300 thank yous from 20-odd-thousand people. It was recognition of what had been given, of what had been overcome, and of what might be a last chance to say goodbye (properly at least). It was the grand gesture of running through the airport to properly say goodbye to someone you really should have shown you cared about prior.
The game didn’t go the way it should have, though you could probably write that about any in 2023. When Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad barely celebrated after he sheepishly stepped Croker to score in the second half it showed the reverence his brethren held him in. It showed how flawed the process that had gotten the club to this position, Croker forced into playing to the edge of his physical abilities because the team was unable to find solutions and replacements at other positions. When the club couldn’t deliver a victory it was typical of a career where Croker’s offering had always outmatched the club’s. In the end it wasn’t that Jarrod had failed us. It’s that we’d never given him what he deserved.
Instead he had to ‘settle’ for being celebrated by thousands of people, chaired off the ground by teammates who had been with him for over a decade. And for a moment we got to honour the achievement of a man who had given everything and overcome so much. Flawed yes. Just like the club he was the emotional centre of, he was an imperfect footballer (though not as flawed as many hot takes asserted). But he was loved, appreciated, and for a brief moment the world felt good, Canberra felt united and humanity was celebrating someone worthy of its adulation. In a year where those glints of sunshine have felt rarer than a well-worked backline movement from the Raiders this moment stands out more than the others.
There were better moments for the club on the field than this night. The victory over the Broncos was a flawed team shooting into the hurricane and somehow succeeding. Corey Horsburgh turning Roy Hunt into his petulant toddler was a heap of fun. Before Corey Harawira-Naera’s medical incident turned the night sour, the victory over the Bunnies was the most repeatable performance the club had all season. For a second it seemed the team might be more that bluff and bluster. Alas.
But none of these reached the heights of saying thank you to Jarrod Croker, properly, at home. Saluting the rare person that deserved it unequivocally. Purely. That is the moment that will endure from 2023. Because football is more than wins and losses. It reveals character. Strips people to their most bare qualities, and allows us to align and associate with what we deem worthy of adulation and admiration. And Jarrod was exactly that.
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