BY DAN

Trying hard and failing, as the Canberra Raiders did in their 16-12 loss to Newcastle, is admirable but insufficient. Their season now is on the brink, victim of a performance in which they pushed hard, scrapped for the entire game, but fell short, broken and in despair. They played with plenty of heart, with some poise, but never enough ingenuity. Now they have to find what made them great good not bad quickly, because the competition is getting away from them.

Canberra needed a victory but then so does everyone right now. With a competition more bunched than roses, every game where two sides chasing the elusive and illustrious tail-end of the eight are fighting is worth it’s weight in palladium. The Raiders were desperate to prove that the hand had beaten their face in over the last three weeks could be just as effective when pointed at the enemy. The Knights similarly eager to keep dragging a season back, once on the brink of destruction now on the edge of the eight. They and the Milk have now switched spots.

This was a game mostly played between the flags. Two sides with big packs willing to run into walls until they came down. The Knights got the best of this for the majority of the game, and it allowed them to establish their beachhead on the scoreboard. Pushing interchangeably at Canberra’s right edge, and their middle. Waiting for an opportunity to open up against the Raiders’ newly shaped left.

The middle is meant to be the Milk’s strength but all players in it have looked tired in recent weeks and it only got worse in this game. Joe Tapine made 40 tackles, Morgan Smithies 39, Trey Mooney 37. Tom Starling made 58, the second week he was in the 50s in tackle count, only this time it was because of their opposition’s game plan rather than a possession imbalance.

Fatigue begat poor contact. Poor contact begat quick rucks. Quick rucks begat poor line speed. There was a ten-minute period in the first half where the Knights ate up so much territory the Milk never made it to the opposition half, constantly kicking from around the 30 metre line in the hope the boot would do what they couldn’t do in the fight.

Defensive weakness in the middle also directly led to points. The Knights second try started with a Tapine and Smithies miss on an anodyne run by Matt Croker. The third came similarly, just insert Guler and Mariota instead. You can quibble about edge decisions but the geneses of these tries began in the middle of the park.

That’s not to say the edges were blameless. They had moments of both brilliant and baked. Elliott Whitehead looked exhausted but he covered errors with his inside-out cover work. Matt Timoko somehow managed to keep Bradman Best in check despite the fact literally running is painful for him right now (if he makes the end of the season without a substantial break I will be shocked). Ethan Strange remains unperturbed by the shape or size thrown at him. He, and Elliott Whitehead pulled off a cracker of a tackle to force an error on Kalyn Ponga heading towards the try line at speed. It wasn’t his only impressive defensive moment.

There were many such moments like this but they only highlighted the error in the moments in which things weren’t done right. The best example is the first try, when Albert Hopoate, Jordan Rapana, and Adam Cook tried to cajole Dane Gagai rather than tackle him. A good start became a frustrating missed opportunity because people didn’t get off their line, didn’t make good contact, and somehow couldn’t even get their shit together quick enough to fix a fixable error.

While their defence came to the party it unfortunately made enough errors, and put them in enough bad positions, that their uninspiring attack couldn’t remedy. We made a bit of a deal last week how the return of Adam Cook brought back a more structured attack to the side. Indeed this was evident again, save for the last few minutes or so when a physically broken Jordan Rapana kept re-inserting himself close to the ruck to ball play. The Raiders got to shifts. They attacked the edges off the back of good play in the middle. They had several moments where they were pushing in numbers on the edge, and made the wrong choice, or the safe choice, which are sometimes the same thing and sometimes not. It created moments they came close to, but didn’t quite grasp, such as when a beautiful unders line from Strange somehow didn’t result in a try, or when Adam Cook’s brilliant kick for Xavier Savage late was ruled to have been knocked on before he scored.

Small errors ruined moments. But the reason they weren’t more opportunities was because they were so intent on winning the ‘grind’ of the game they forgot to try to play a bit of footy until they were chasing the game. Don’t get me wrong, key middles were again exemplary (with the ball at least). Joe Tapine (16 for 178m, 75 post contact) is somehow taken for granted. His partnership with Josh Papallii (14 for 150m, 50 odd post contact and three tackles breaks) is a blessing. And when you add the tackles these two made (71) to the runs they took (30) you realise how downright lucky we are to have them.

But if they, or Trey Mooney (somehow had only 80 metres despite looking threatening almost every time he carried the ball) didn’t barge down the door, the Milk never even thought to look for another way in. This overly-conservative approach probably contributed to the errors in judgement at critical moments. How are you meant to know how to handle a 3-on-1 if you’re only ever in that position once a month? In that period in the first half where Canberra were stuck in their own half they needed to find another way to shift around their opposition. By the time they did Kaeo Weekes got in space and dropped the ball. The lesson taken was ‘don’t try things so you can’t get hurt’ instead of ‘errors are ok if you’re trying to actually flipping score’.

In the end it made 16 points feel like a million, despite Canberra pressing for what felt like the entirely of the last fifteen minutes. For what feels like the millionth week in a row they threw so few shots their only points came from a crash ball (admittedly the right play by Tom Starling and Josh Papalii on the back of Joe Tapine’s dominant run) and Kaeo Weekes going the distance because Elliott Whitehead stuck out his mitt when a try was in the offering for the opposition.

Finding points is proving a difficulty but in recent weeks I’ve seen them shift, and push at utilising their other weapons other than their middles. They’ve occasionally run plays that were downright exciting (like Strange powering back against the grain like a locomotive), and even when their shifts have come to nothing, they’ve still given opportunities to play more exciting football on the back of. But yet they revert to the tried and true.

It’s hard not to think much of the reticence to use the full range of powers come from the trauma of the last few weeks. You can’t win if you drop the ball. It’s also driven by Stuart’s inherent conservativeness, a desire to control the controllables. Players rave about the footy not being structured, being able to play what they see. But if unstructured footy is just bash and barge then it’s just a different, and less exciting cage.

So the Raiders were both courageous and cowardly. Willing to go the extra mile to make a tackle, scared of throwing a pass outside of the planning of their coach. In the end they kept the game close because that was the whole point. But they didn’t play to win. They played to not lose. It wasn’t enough.

If there’s a hope in the darkest parts of my heart it’s that the last two weeks have been about re-establishing normal. Rebuilding the foundation shaken by injury and personnel-determined stylistic change through the middle of the season. Results not so much be-damned, but winning put to the side to build something that can be more than just an occasional red-lined victory. But they’re running out of time.

These last two weeks have proven that there’s more under the hood. Canberra just need to hit the gas. Because now they’re a long way behind.

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