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. If you missed Part 1 on the hooking situation you can read it here.

One of the hopes we all are holding on to for 2024 is that the subtraction of Jack Wighton will result in some sort of reversion to the free-flowing attack that once characterised the Milk.

The story we tell ourselves goes like this. The Raiders had become too ‘Jack-dependent’ in recent years. With the departures of more experienced and skilled players like Josh Hodgson, George Williams, and to a lesser extent Aidan Sezer, Canberra increasingly turned to Jack to be a sun around which the attack orbited. The more ‘traditional’ responsibility he took on the less his unique set of skills was suited to the task. He pushed and pushed trying to make the Raiders great again, and just succeeded in making errors. Without him a more even spread will result, and the Milk can return to more cohesive and structured attack. It may not be enough to send them back to Valhalla but it would be a good start.

There is a lot of things that will need to work to make this happen. They need to have the intent to. Assistant Coach Mick Crawley has been at the helm of Raiders attacks that had massive success in other eras but it’s hard to say that anything they’d done since 2019 has been in that oeuvre. Is he still at the forefront of the game? As we suggested recently they need to maintain an innovative edge in their work. Justin Giteau might offset any concerns about Crawley’s ‘experience’, and has been at the coalface of the game long enough without being co-opted by the inherent rigidities and conservative groupthink of the NRL coaching class. They, with Coach Stuart, will have to implement, solidify and coagulate a new set of skill players, not forgetting said players have as much experience than a mules with a spinning wheel. There’s vibes but no clarity at one, six, and nine, which, to be frank, isn’t how you normally build a functional offence. Someone has to emerge to make all this happen.

A key part of this story for 2024 was borne in 2023: the belief that the Raiders looked better when the attack wasn’t so heliocentric, and allowed Jamal Fogarty to play a bigger hand, arguably the biggest. It was about roles. Let the guy that organises, connects and creates be the organising, creating half, and let the mercurial wunderkind be the Paul Mercurio. It’s one of those things that we observed so often in 2023 that it becomes ill-defined; a shorthand vibe that we aren’t football smart enough to articulate.

I knew what it looked like to me – when Fogarty was touching the ball more than Jack, both in the menial up-and-down of grinding sets, but in directing the Milk’s very rare redzone structured movements, it was better than when Jack was. It allowed Jamal (and the hookers) to get the side into positions to take advantage of weaknesses, to implement set moves, and to generally play normal football. And it left Jack to do the things he does best (fuck around and/or find out). It meant the Raiders didn’t get stuck on one side of the field, allowing Matt Timoko to be the fucking weapon he is.

But if those of us drooling from the nosebleeds saw that, the Milk didn’t see it the same way. Fogarty’s per game possessions ranked him below such luminaries as Brandon Wakeham and Jake Cogger. By my wrangling he was around 12th among regular halfbacks. He did average more possessions than Jack (at least in Fox’s numbers), but when that normalcy was disturbed there was some evidence that the Raiders weren’t at their best. In 2023 the Raiders averaged 20.25 points a game. That jumped to 22.5 when Fogarty had more touches than whoever was at six (mostly Wighton, but occasionally Matt Frawley and notably Brad Schneider in the famous Broncos win). The Raiders had 11 wins and 6 losses in those games, a win percentage of near 65 per cent (higher than their already inflated 54 per cent win record in 2023).

But that’s correlation rather than causation. Did the Raiders improve because he touched the ball more? Or did their improvement get the ball in Fogarty’s hands more? Was it something about Fogarty, or just that Jack’s annus was more horribilis than the nude wrestling in Borat. Indeed in 2022 you wouldn’t have made that case – the Raiders averaged 25.5 points a game, and won 8 of their 11 games (73 per cent) that Fogarty got to touch the ball less than his halves counterpart.

So what’s the takeaway? The Milk are better if Jamal’s halves partner doesn’t play like he’s tried and failed to dodge a wrench? It’s hardly something to build a new era of footy on – forcing the ball into one players’ hands was the problem to start of with. They still need to find balance, lest they find themselves in the same situation as 2023, with Fogarty playing the domineering role of Jack. More Fogarty is probably a good thing but it needs to be aimed at developing an attack that can attack all thirds of the field.

Regardless of whether they think it’s a definite path forward the Raiders have little option. To paraphrase the devil there is no alternative but to seek more balance, paradoxically by allowing Fogarty to be more involved. But they also have an opportunity; a freedom to build that without having to get caught in the wake of the imperfections and needs of other players.

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