BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders 16-6 loss at Melbourne was improvement. In a brutal game the Raiders did their best to turn the disappointment of the last fortnight into a miracle. Instead they got something quieter, more honest. They competed. They strived. They showed they could play a style of football not totally bereft of dynamism, not constrained by panic and the failings of their features. What resulted wasn’t the complete turnaround most were hoping for. But all is not lost.

There was a part of me, probably a part of every Canberra fan that secretly hoped this would be the game they would turn it all around. Throw caution to the wind, crazy up the game and win through a combination of chaos and temerity. But that part of me also knew that after the last few weeks it wasn’t so much that the Raiders needed a victory but rather to show they could play the style of footy that had characterised their play early. A style of footy that was sustainable, independent of the madness of their forefathers to create points and solve problems. In the non-Fogarty era this year that had become part of the character of the side, an easy reversion to make given it was how they’d played so much in recent years.

What was offered though was rectification. Slight improvements to structures and approaches. Marginal gains in width and defensive resolve. Attitudinal corrections to show that fight not flight was the preferred state-of-nature. All of these were shown, so while a loss resulted, there was some encouragement that with some further improvements that better isn’t just a dream.

Of course Canberra couldn’t escape entirely what they’d offered in recent weeks. In terms of oddly specific ways to lose games, being unable to clean up kicks is as particular as they come. But that was a huge part of why the Raiders struggled in this game. Forget your structures, your width or your defensive resolve. Turning the ball over on kicks just isn’t a sustainable way to play footy.

And boy did the Raiders do that. At half time they’d successfully defused 11 per cent of the kicks sent their way. That number is normally somewhere above 80 per cent. It ended at 18 per cent. Kaeo Weekes dropped three takeable kicks in his new role as fullback. Xavier Savage and Jordan Rapana got in on the act. Of the nine first half errors seven were from outside backs. There were extenuating circumstances. It was a wet night. The Storm are tidy and accurate kickers. Weekes and Rapana were playing positions they hadn’t played all year. But it simply wasn’t the standard they normally would expect.

Of course kick clean-up wasn’t the only source of errors throughout the game – you don’t get to 17 mistakes for the game out of spite. They dropped plenty in contact. Add to this a comical level of repeat sets and penalties through the first sixty minutes of the game and you can understand why the Milk had to survive with only forty per cent of the ball.

The Raiders are not an efficient attack at the best of times. But starved of possession, a compound mix of their various disciplines of ill-discipline, meant that the game was never played where they wanted it to be. A whopping 52 minutes was played in their own half. More than a third of the game was played in the Canberra twenty. They were outgained by near 600 metres, and that was almost entirely down o the difference in possession. To paraphrase Forrest Gump said, I may not be a smart man but I know that’s not how you win footy games.

And it had direct impacts on them. The first try came on the set after Savage dropped a difficult but takeable bomb. The second try started with an Elliott Whitehead error in his own half, combined in a penalty for a high-shot. The third try started with a five minute long possession, extended by (in order): an error from Elliott Whitehead on a late-set attempted strip, a failure by Rapana to handle a kick, him then knocking down a pass to give the Storm a further addendum, a six-again, and finally a defence in such a state that three middles were defending on the left edge instead of the edge defenders, and even then Ata Mariota got ran over by Jack Horwath. Add to that the Storms having two near-tries turned down, also from kicks, and you’ve got some straight-lines of accountability from the Raiders to the errors they committed and the opportunities they afforded.

It was all the more frustrating because in almost every other facet of the game the Green Machine fought admirably. It was a dour affair and given the chance they really could have enjoyed the arm wrestle. And for brief periods they did. Joe Tapine (14 for 146, 47 post contact)was his usual expression of prop excellence, particular given he never operated on the advantage. Josh Papalii, Trey Mooney and Ata Mariota all had strong moments. This could have been a strength they lent into given more even possession. Alas.

On the back of this Canberra played with width for what felt the first time since Jamal Fogarty went down. Adam Cook operated at first receiver on both sides of the field, and all aspects of the attack benefited. Width! Sweet width, was brought, and Cook looked comfortable in directing and shifting the attack around. The Raiders got to width, got to throw shape into the mix. They played shifts on top of shifts. Suddenly Strange and Weekes felt like they were operating in space, and both looked vastly more dynamic than recent weeks. Hudson Young got to run some regular second-rower lines off the back of it. The attack, though bereft of opportunities, felt open for the first time in months.

It was limited by their discipline issues, and also compounded by them. The Milk seemed so unfamiliar with the circumstances they were in they didn’t execute as well as they would have liked. Matty Timoko pushed a ball wide to Savage despite there not being space. He dropped early ball as thought he was surprised to finally get it in space. Bert Hopoate threw a pass into Rapana’s shins that should have been given cleaner and probably earlier. On another well worked shift late in the game Rapana finally got into the clear and kicked the ball away on the first. It screamed ‘I haven’t had this much freedom in ages and I might not get it again”. They still occasionally got caught around the ruck. On one rare attacking set in the second half a Canberra half didn’t touch the ball until it was kicking time. And that their only points came from a random kick return, well, that’s Raiders football. At little *too* Raiders footabll.

The Raiders defence was also very good – given the weight of possession and the quality of the opposition it had to be. There was better physicality, though still not enough, across the park. Outside of the some notable brain explosions the goal line defence was very good, and Canberra only conceded three tries despite the Storm basically living in their twenty. Last week’s team would have conceded 300 points in the same circumstances.

A special shoutout here to Tom Starling. He made a team leading 53 tackles (four misses) across 69 minutes of play. His defensive resolve brought a stability and a strength to the middle of the ruck that has been missing from Canberra’s defence. It looked stout while he was out there, able to withstand what was thrown. Perhaps that’s also a pathway to keep building. If none of the preferred rakes are elite passers you can at least pick an elite defender. Hudson, Tapine, Smithies and Smelly all made the amount of tackles that would have had them leading the tackle count on another week.

But the were still moments and they were costly. The first try came when Elliott Whitehead jumped out of the line like he thought someone had stolen his wallet. The pass went to a prop standing behind him. On the second try he didn’t get off the line at all at weakside A defender, meaning that the Bronson Garlick had enough time to stop t the ruck, turn, and practically run to the try line before putting the backrower into the hole outside the captain. He was exhausted, but it looked like a man who had been asked to do too much defence.

So it was a loss but it was also improvement. There are solutions here that can be maintained going forward. Adam Cook proved exactly the organiser, the width, and the boot this team needed. He was surprisingly stout in defence too. Weekes should stay at fullback, and will be better under kicks with practice and time. Cleaning up errors and discipline is easier said than done, but it’s a damn sight easier than trying to fix the plethora of structural issues that had held this club back in recent times. While these aren’t necessarily solved, we’ve got a hypothesis to test next week. Then its reinforcements.

But for now it’s hard to know who Canberra will put up next week. There were a host of concussions (Jordan Martin, Jordan Rapana and Ata Mariota). Hudson Young and Matt Timoko seem to be playing injured or hurt depending on how you measure things. Morgan Smithies desperately needs some help in his role, and unfortunately Corey Horsburgh did a thing in Cup Footy and won’t be around a while. Maybe it means Hohepa Puru. More likely Emre Guler gets his reprieve.

After two of the darkest weeks in recent memory the Raiders needed a victory and instead got improvement. They needed a cathartic rise over impossible odds, combining all the craziness of their best and worst into a victory over the top team in the competition at their home ground. It wasn’t chaos and victory and all those things we’ve seen this side pull together before, only to toss away the following week. They didn’t get that. Instead they got a more honest set of improvements to build on. From the rubble a truth emerges.

There’s a dangerousness to treating losses too highly. The road to hell is paved with moral victories. Canberra weren’t good enough and any conclusion other than there’s work to do is misguided. After all, if next week reverts to the trajectory of the last fortnight then this was all meaningless. But after the barren wasteland of the last few weeks this was green shoots. Not the final flower in bloom but something that can be nurtured into something more than we saw in this game.

The Canberra Raiders are not back. But nor are they a lost cause.

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