BY DAN

The hurt from the Canberra Raiders’ putrid performance against the Sharks was compounded by Zac Hosking suffering a category 1 concussion. Under this year’s new concussion protocol it rules him out for eleven days, meaning he’ll miss next Sunday’s game against Parramatta.

This has been made worse by the absence of Elliott Whitehead from the side with a niggling calf issue. As anyone over 30 will attest to, once you injure your calf reinjury becomes and ‘if’ not ‘when’ thing. Relying on Whitehead to a) recover from a re-injury and then b) get through 80 minutes of edge defence against a very good backrow is a proposition filled with risk. Through four weeks of the season Smell has played about twenty minutes of football. What fitness he’d carried over from the pre-season and trial season is rapidly becoming less relevant. That he’s carrying the most ‘easy-to-reinjure’ injury only heightens the drama.

In Sunday’s game Ata Mariota covered the right back row position after Hosking left the field. He did an admirable job, only really looking defensively uncomfortable on one occasion. On a night more disappointing than a first date with me Mariota’s ability to play decent defence against a Sharks team that relentlessly targeted Canberra’s edges was a quiet achievement. But asking him to do it from the start and therefore allowing a team as good as the Eels to game-plan for testing every aspect of a middle-forward’s agility would be a risk. It seems wiser to keep Mariota in the 17, as backup for whoever does fill in, but also able to do what he’s actually good at – tearing through the middle.

If Whitehead is available some sort of job-share seems the most likely way forward for next weekend (most likely with Smell playing until he can’t). But if he’s not the Raiders will have to cast their net wider. As we said relying on Mariota seems a bridge too far. Corey Horsburgh might be an option to cover out as he was in the past, but he simply isn’t match fit. His performance on Sunday was more ‘community theatre does Phantom of the Opera’ than his 2023 Broadway specials (p.s Corey doing Music of the Night, make it happen Lloyd-Webber you absolute coward). Asking him to cover a more aerobically demanding position for more minutes would make sense in Cup footy as a way to get him up to speed for the top line, not the other way around.

There’s an option outside the first choice unit that I would be intrigued by. Semi Sasagi came to the club last year as a centre/backrow utility. It was recognition that the Milk were finding conventional backrowers hard to come by. He’s spent the off-season and early rounds of the NSW Cup season proving he’s made the transition to backrow, looking increasingly comfortable at the position and proving an absolute weapon at times. On the weekend he scored a barnstorming try, tearing through would be defenders from 30 plus metres out, and it didn’t feel surprising. After all, it contained just one of his nine tackle breaks. He’s consistently offered a strong running option and sound line running. I’ve not noticed his defence, which for an edge defender isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and his agility would help him in that regard.

Sasagi is only 22 and has shown that he’s athletically capable of playing first grade. He’s got experience – he’s already played 16 NRL games for the Knights, mostly at centre or bench utility. He would bring many similar things that Hosking has brought – agility, strong line-running, and hopefully robust defence. He would also be par to a continued investment in the future. This season has always been about keeping on eye on today and one eye on the horizon.

This isn’t without downsides. For starters it would mean Sasagi gets to play but Trey Mooney would still sit outside the 17. That’s not a problem in the sense that anyone would expect Mooney to be playing on the edge. But at some point the #JusticeForTrey movement might get overwhelmed from all the players leapfrogging Mooney. Of course one can simply bring Trey into the 17 in a myriad of other ways.

It’s also an imperfect matchup. Coming up against a a giraffe like Shaun Lane isn’t something you can solve with agility. If you don’t get strong contact on him he simply falls forward and drops the ball for either his hard-running five-eighth (normally Brown but probably Talagi), his centre or a supporting Clint Gutherson. Sasagi is strong but this would be a difficult matchup physically for him.

There’s also a challenge in that he’s mostly been playing on the left and the opportunity is on the right, but let’s assume Sasagi isn’t Derek Zoolander and can turn in both directions. At the very worst I’m sure Hudson Young could switch sides (though I’d be reticent to put Sasagi and Strange next to each other in defence).

Whether or not he embraces these risks or not, I doubt this is the decision that Stuart makes. He’ll go back to the old warhorse and hope he can squeeze the best part of the 80 minutes out of him while using Mariota’s performance on Sunday as coverage for making a more ‘courageous’ decision. But what would normally be the ‘safe’ option is rendered a risk by the state of Whitehead’s calf. One can only hope it’s good to go, at least for one week.

Like the page on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or share this on social media and I’ll laugh at the portrait of what we’ve become. I also thought about titling this ‘Ricksy conservatism’ but it made more sense to me than you. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not.