BY DAN

Our off-season series this year will be on the key problems that the Raiders must address now and into the future in order for the 2024 season, and those beyond. You can find Part II here.

As anyone who has read these pages before we think Zac Woolford is a pretty good footy player. He’s not athletically gifted – he’ll never Damian Cook a side into the dust. He’s not a Cameron Smith level oragniser, nor blessed with the preternatural creativity and ability to spot and torment an opposition weakness like Josh Hodgson. He gives good service, can pass both sides of his body, and is adept a working a ruck to the benefit of his pack. On occasion he kicks, or finds a weakness he can take advantage of. He rarely overplays his hand. Generally he fits into a side, and the team functions best when he’s on the field.

He joined the club for magic round 2022, seemingly single-handedly sparking at attack that had to that point been more moribund than my fat ass this summer. But despite this profound and ongoing impact he’s been oddly out of favour. To reiterate a stat I’ve overused in these pages, in 2022 the club was averaging 14 points a game before he joined and then 27 after. Similarly in 2023 when he didn’t play through the opening few rounds the attack fell back to 14 points a game. It didn’t jump in the same way when he came back but it was better. As Raiders twitter king Harry is fond of pointing out, his career win percentage as a hooker (63.9%) is third in the competition, only behind Mitch Kenny (79.5%) and Brandon Smith (74.3%). Danny Levi’s is 24% for reference.

Which of course means there’s something wrong with him.

I don’t know what that is. In the 2022/3 off-season the club went out and signed Danny Levi, he of the aforementioned worst winning record of active rakes in the competition. There were rumours that suggested Zac was out of shape. These were rebuffed by the man, his family, and anyone in any official sense. Then Levi was given the starting gig on the basis of….training the house down? It was like 2022 had never happened. He worked his way back to preferred number 9 last season, only for rumours to emerge as soon as the off-season hit that he was being shopped around the Super League, and further scuttlebutt that he was offered with the NRL. While none of these are confirmed the continuity of this is hard to ignore. In the meantime both Danny Levi and Tommy Starling’s time in Canberra were extended. Zac remains a free agent as of 1 November last year.

Every suggestion is that Danny Levi will be the starting 9 come round one next year. For starters before his double-broken-jaws in 2023 that’s where he was. Every single person with a media credential that is making a way-too-early starting 17 for round one puts him there, including the brother of a Raiders assistant coach, and the man who gets a good chunk of Coach Stuart’s ‘exclusives’ and defends him obsequiously on NRL360, Paul Crawley.

It’s hard to know what to make of Levi. He hasn’t shown anything in his immediate time in Canberra that suggests he’s ahead of any other rake in terms of skill and ability. He’s a quality defender, and while he never was a good passer or creator before he went to the Super League, there’s suggestions he’s made strides there (we’ll withhold judgement until we can see it on the field). The only thing we *know* is that Ricky thinks he’s a good trainer, which matters, but probably more in Stick’s mind that on the reality of the football field (noting Stick has to build culture and we take that as a given).

So far the sample size is too small to throw in the towel and start celebrating our new hooking overlord. The Raiders enter the year with four hookers on the roster (adding in Adrian Trevilyan as a ‘supplemental’ player than can play from round one). Tommy Starling’s development has calcified and key improvements to his passing game has simply never eventuated (well, not in the way we wanted). If Woolford is being pushed out and Levi is the number one are the Raiders going to be better? It’s hard to accede to that idea.

If Stick is sure about Levi and Woolford’s respective place in the club then there’s little to be done but hope he’s right. It seems plainly obvious to us that Woolford is the top of the depth chart for Canberra, but that’s why some people are national rugby league coaches and others let a coconut overripen because they couldn’t work out how to open it (the trick, I worked out too late, is to smash it open). But it’s impossible not to think that there’s more to this story than has been let on. What that might be is beyond me. Woolford is a quality footballer, seems desperate to make his way in the top line, and is the lineage of club royalty for an organisation that normally loves its old boys.

It’s important to get right. The difference between Canberra’s best and worst in recent years has been influenced by the play of their hookers. Going back beyond Woolford’s arrival the Raiders best modern seasons have been built around the play of their rake – be it Hodgson (2016, 2019), Starling in Vlandoball (2020) or Woolford in 2022. Given a young and inexperienced spine it’s even more important than ever that the quality of play of the number nine be consistent, and not ‘take things off the table’. Young players will need good service. They can’t be expected to account for this flawed play of more experienced players.

Canberra has an option in its grasp that can, if not change their side, at least not be a handbrake on its ability to function and has proven it at the NRL level. It instead seems to be betting on a player that has never done it in the top line because he trains hard and discarding another because…well…who knows.

Now that could be problem.

Do me a favour and like the page on Facebook,  follow me on Twitter, or share this on social media and I’ll show you how I can do the dance from the Men In Black song. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not.