BY DAN

Welcome to the 2024 season. This will be a year filled with love. With frustration. With excitement and chaos, class and gauche mixed together in equal parts like the negroni that started your night and the kebab that ended it.

This will probably hurt, but you’re a Raiders fan so you’re used to that. Maybe even proud in a weird way. Shit I wear my scars like the rings on a pimp. Nobly supporting a team that probably won’t even make the finals? A team being written off by everyone else because they lost the only ‘star’ the casual fans that work for the Sydney media know?

I’m home baby.

This team will be difficult to watch sometimes. There’s too much promise. Too much change in the spine. Too much fucking perspective. Players will make errors this year that will destroy a thousand remotes. Catch many a parent mid-swear in front of their kids. Ruin evenings, weekends, weekly podcast rituals. Perfectly good celebration whisky will become whisky and sadness.

But they’ll be times where it’s glorious; it’ll intoxicate like a pretty face across the bar that smiles back at you, filling that bit of your heart and stomach that is inexplicably thrown together in a salad mixer in those moments. Maybe it’s more glory than pain. Maybe it’s enough to squeeze into the finals. Such was the smoke and mirrors of last year’s campaign that they could improve (bottom four in defence and attack!) and still miss the finals.

The cool thing is that the foundation, for the most part, is built for success. They will compete in the middle. They will get yards and yards out of their back three, no matter how that line up. Canberra will play games from the right end of the field.

What happens from there will be imperfect, and in theory that’s fine but it won’t feel that way. The strengths of this club too closely resemble a good football team, so there will be days where it’s the polar opposite to last year. They’ll look good, and still lose. They’re will be times where players will look like they’ve worked it out, and that may sustain us for weeks at a time. Like that one drive you hit down the middle of the fairway, that one wave that you actually get up for, that granita I got in Sardegna that made me spend six weeks trying to find another one just like it; it’ll provide the hook that keeps bringing us back.

For the young spine this road will bumpy. Non-linear. The hope is that lessons are learned that stand the side in good stead to build towards something. Patience is a virtual necessity because this year isn’t so much about this year than it is what comes after. Big gains this year might occur outside our purview, without visible impact on the field. We might learn more about 2024 in 2025 than we will watching this year. Words like rebuilding and transition have been bandied about. I prefer learning. This is what this season is about.

That’s not to say it’s hopeless. Sometimes when you’re young you don’t know any better, Uncluttered minds unencumbered by the traumas of their forefathers. There is a world where this all breaks right and the talent takes the competition by storm, the 2005 vibes (or, in Canberran, the 1989 vibes) start flowing and the Milk are everyone’s second favourite team again. That’s the hope speaking though.

They have the bits at every position outside the spine. The pack is elite. Joe Tapine still has a few more years of prime left (and what a prime it is). Ata Mariota is going to make himself known this year. Josh Papalii will love coming off the bench, running through rotation forwards like they’re all named Damian Cook. Their load will be lowered by the presence of Smithies, Horsburgh and either Hosking or Whitehead, so expert in Dirty Work you could call them Norm MacDonald (criminally underrated film).

The backs, while not as loaded as the pack, will take little off the table. Jordan Rapana plays football like there’s three minutes to stop the bomb exploding. Matt Timoko plays like the kool-aid man trying to turn opposing defences into his favourite wall. I rate Seb Kris more highly as a centre than most, and more than I had before 2022. He’s expanded his ball play in his time at fullback. Over 2022 and 2023 he’s proved that as a centre he’s better than average. The remaining wing spot should be Nic Cotric’s (because he should own it by now) but it could be anyone’s. Xavier Savage’s pace appeals. James Schiller has shown a lot. ‘Bert Hopoate is a clubhouse leader because of his ability to do what Stuart wants and needs.

They’ll miss Jack Wighton, but not last year’s version. He’d always been an awkward fit; their best skill player who also wasn’t a prototypical skill player. Something both more structured and innovative can now emerge. Jamal Fogarty will be at the helm. Lord help us if he gets injured though.

There is a wealth of talent in this side despite what people will tell you. But the youth brings a variance in outcomes for the Raiders that is beyond their control. Fresh hearts and blooming talent can’t cover the gaps in experience (and, god forbid, in the imperfect positions they are put in by the strategic minds in the coaching box). It’s not inevitable but this year is going to be a challenging one.

In 2023 it was clear from early on that the Raiders were an engine with little power revving as much as they could, like a tiny dog trying to scare off intruders with a rowdy bark. This year the challenge will be actually getting the clutch engaged to find the gears. The potential of this side is much higher than recent years; but equally it’s much less likely they’ll get there. This year at least.

So it seems inevitable that this road will be bumpy. We know it already and yet here we are. The culmination of love is grief, and yet we love despite the inevitable.

Welcome to 2024. Enjoy the ride.

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