BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders NRLW trial would have felt awfully familiar to any observer of the Milk in recent years. A burden, put on their own shoulders, wore them down. Unending and almost comical plethora of errors undermining any intent or effort the team was showing. It was beyond frustrating, and made it near impossible to tell anything about what the club will offer this season. A 28-8 (but really 7 tries to 2, no conversions were attempted in this game) loss was the end result. There is but one lesson: hold the ball, from there all things are possible.

We’d love to throw some stats at you but unfortunately it seems none have been made public. But trust us when we say through the opening half of the game the Raiders completed somewhere between 3 and 5 per cent of their sets (I exaggerate but it certainly felt that way). It was the kind of stuff that peaks a frustration that becomes a resigned amusement. You couldn’t try to drop as much ball as they did.

And for a while they held out. It was admirable. They scrambled. They battled. They worked their butts off in defence to keep an elite side scoreless through the best part of the first twenty minutes despite barely having the ball. Every time you thought maybe they were ready to turn the momentum of the game because they’d repelled *another* attacking set, they simply offered the Knights another chance. A try came each side of quarter time, each time tired edges just unable to make one-on-one tackles on the line and the Knights were away.

In a game split into quarters it was a pattern that held in the 1st, 2nd and 4th of the game. Canberra dropped the ball, the Knights pressured the line, Canberra held, got the ball back, dropped it again, and then Newcastle scored, generally wearing away the middle as defenders tired, dragged edges to the middle and left those remaining on the outside to make desperate one-on-one tackles. When they didn’t the Knights scored. Despite the best efforts of people like Grace Kemp and Simaima Taufa, who both had some exemplary runs in the middle to get the Milk into better positions, errors were still found, holes were still dug, problems were found, nurtured, shown the love every child needs to develop into full-blooded predicaments.

In the third quarter there was a brief respite when Emma Barnes scored two tries, Mackenzie Wiki showed some powerful line running on the right edge, and the Raiders played a bit of footy. Canberra went direct up the guts and hit the edges like you know they can through powerful middles led by Taufa. Barnes was sprightly working with the forwards – she’ll push for a starting spot with a full-season this year – and she got involved at the right times on both tries. Ash Quinlan and Zehara Temara combined well together as they should, and unleashed Wiki on an unsuspecting public. Tatiana Finau looked powerful. Wiki felt underutilised last season. This game she ran angry. Angry at the ground, the opposition, the situation the Raiders had put themselves in. If only someone could explain to me why it’s so hard to hold the ball in the tackle after a break.

For a second though they threatened the game and it all seemed to make a bit of sense. Grain of salt and all that as many of the Knights first-string started to find their way to the bench after half time. Despite a weakened opposition in the last twenty minutes the Milk reverted to what had held them back originally, relapsing with typical calamity and the Knights added three late tries to the four they’d scored in the first half. When Cheyelle Robins-Reti was carried from the field in the second half with what looked like a major injury it only added pain to the sadness.

Listen, this is almost one of those things where you don’t take anything away from the trial because the performance was so haphazard. Forget showing their hand – most of the time Canberra didn’t even get to the flop before they were folding. The Knights are really good and will exploit those errors better than most, but this isn’t a way of playing against any side. Call it first-week-back jitters, call it a bad day out. This has to be a one off for the Milk. Forget clowns that say this team is making the finals. Forget that this was against the back-to-back defending champions. Playing like this can only end in pain. Trust us, we’ve watched it before.

But trials are that for a reason. To get a taste. To realise what adjustments need to be made. The tinkering needed. You hope that it’s a matter of familiarity and timing and all things will work out. That is a challenge that teams that only get to come together for the shorter NRLW pre-season will face. Canberra evidently aren’t immune to that, but they also seem a lot farther away from top gear than one may have hoped. There’s less than a month to get right.

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