BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders insipid 46-24 capitulation to the Manly Sea Eagles was a microcosm of the season. Moments of brilliance cuckolded by an overly simplistic game-plan. Defence effort of the collective undermined by the meekness of the individual. Hot blooded effort driving everything. Hotheads making bad decisions. It all but ends their chances of making the finals which seems just. This team needs work and we need a break from the frustration.

It should have been different. Canberra were playing for their season and trying to celebrate Josh Papalii. Manly are a good side, probably better than them, but they’ve proven gettable. If you’re a team with designs on playing finals footy then beating *this* Manly team at home is a key test. Well, pens down fuckers. There’s nothing left to do but drink the shame away and accept there are lessons to learn.

For the second week it was two teams with contrasting styles. Canberra are so centrally focused they could be a CNN pundit. The good stuff began with Joe Tapine. Another game, another 180 odd metres. It’s been a matter of course these past few years but that doesn’t mean we should take it for granted. Josh Papalii also looked spry, scoring one try off a hit up and nearly another from a late crash ball. All the time it was quick feet at the line, good defence in his work. Always bending the line, forever poking his head through in the vain hope someone might care.

Bang the drum (hope you’re well Simon) and hope. That was the tale. Off the back of that the Raiders either went with “offload-based chaos ball” or halves hitting edge backrowers (and occasionally wide-running props) on face balls. It was nothing if not disciplined, which is nice I guess. It was designed to target the inside of the edge defenders – make the Manly bigs defend inside out and let people like Hudson Young and Kaeo Weekes (and occasionally Ethan Strange) take advantage. It was a simple plan that relied on winning the middle in order to exhaust the inside-out defenders. It worked, occasionally, but Canberra stuck with the plan with a level of fastidiousness I wish they’d apply to other areas of their football.

When Young or Weekes was able to do it looked great. The fullback scored Canberra’s second off an offload that created an opportunity for him to dance. He made Nathan Brown look silly. Their last try combined second-phase play with Weekes balling on the edge. Hudson Young should have created the third when he fast stepped his way through the line, and he was otherwise excellent in his work for the second week in a row. He was less good trying to create but that’s kinda the rub. Asking a backrower to be a ballplayer is like getting me to sing. I can do it but we’re all going to be sad. Get him running hot lines and beating people either his fee, that’s the fucking gear. But don’t put him in positions where he feels like if he doesn’t make something happen no one will.

Instead the Raiders did exactly that. Canberra never really go wider than Huddo without a bit of chaos or clunk. On their first attacking foray they went the best part of 15 tackles without actually throwing a functional shift. They scored but it felt like rewarding poor behaviour. Getting wide required an offload, a half running sideways, things of that nature. At one point in the second half a red zone set actually shot a ball beyond the backrow as a first movement, and the entire backline watched the ball hit the ground in abject surprise.

It was an indictment of the gameplan, proof of Tom Starling’s and Morgan Smithies limitations as middle distributors. It put pressure on Fogarty to both create and distribute and he couldn’t. When Cook came on it provided a Friday-night-at-the-pub cover band duplication of the man inside. If it did get the ball wider it didn’t create anything different and just cut down the time better players had with the ball.

It’s bad short term strategy; undermining Fogarty by duplicating his skills, and making it harder for arguably your most threatening ball runner to get the ball. And if I can play pop psychology, putting another organising voice on the field undermined Fogarty’s. I have a vibe that Jamal’s imperfect form the last two weeks is reflective of when Jack would try to take the reins. He thrives when he’s in charge. He becomes timid when he’s sharing, makes worse decisions. Tries came after his errors (like the penalty that didn’t find touch), poor decisions (his early chip kick easily taken by Tommy T) or his surprisingly ineffectual long-kicking game. It’s also a bad long term strategy: ripping crucial reps away from a future five-eighth. I’ve no idea what Sticky is thinking other than he misses Matt Frawley.

Of course that was caused by Jordan Rapana’s HIA and by no means was it Canberra’s biggest problem. With 46 points in the wrong it’s easy to spot where that was. Manly’s game plan tested the Raiders’ edges, much as the Dogs did last week and the Cows will next. This is perfectly demonstrated by the fact that Tom Starling ‘only’ made 38 tackles. Rare was the hit up that came at the big defenders waiting. They had to go searching for work in aid of the edges.

The edges for their part never looked comfortable. Only two tries came through the first 39 minutes of the first half. But it always felt like questions were being asked that at some point the Milk would have no answer for. They did, however struggle through, with support from the good work of the middle defenders, who in the first rotation were pushing up and out and making the decisions made by edge defenders more frequently manageable.

But through the time that Taps and Papa were off field that fell apart. The game went from tied to 28-12 in a blink between the 40th and 49th minute. The first try came because of lazy inside coverage from Smithies and Trey Mooney. A further try came immediately in the second half when Canberra couldn’t put decent contact on a man slightly more mobile than a statue. He offloaded to his brother and a second later the edge defender (Timoko) was again trying to solve an equation with help arriving too late from the inside. A minute later they relentlessly attack that same edge, drawing Smell into the tackle and demanding the bigs cover across. Tom Starling was at A on the fat side, ostensibly covering for a Karl Lawton decoy. But the three-on-two was on the other side of the ruck.

Then Tapine got sin-binned and whatever semblance of resistance or hope of a comeback the Raiders were holding on to was erased. Capitulation, Canberra style was ordered and all hell broke loose. A defence stretching at the seams to cover the edges snapped at its weakest point as Paseka ran over Tom Starling, isolated on the biggest person on the park. Seb Kris got beaten on his outside by one of the fastest people outside of Paris, a symptom of the absence of Rapana but also a defence unable to close any space before it got to Saab. Then Luke Brooks ran over or past Simi Sagagi (past sounds better for Simi), defending on the right edge because Whitehead was in the middle trying to help out. What followed from the Green Machine was some fine garbage time footy, but not really worth dwelling on.

There will be those that want to talk about the refereeing and that’s fair. That Luke Brooks wasn’t penalised (or worse) for his tackle on Jamal Fogarty is a poor decision, by referee Atkins initially and then supported by the bunker. This act was endangerment of players. It went against the League’s published stance of these tackles (that you can see here). If the league has altered that interpretation then I am confused about their commitment to player safety. There is no justifying it, and if the league tries on Monday then I would suggest further clarification is sought by all and sundry.

The Raiders hadn’t lost the game by the time Tapine got sin-binned but it was close, and teetering. They needed composure across the park and didn’t get it. The hole they had dug was heavily influenced by their own errors. Following him getting binned the club needed to lift and couldn’t. I’ve no idea what he said, but this seemed to me more like frustration of a game and a season falling out of his grip during his first rest. His second rest went even worse.

Now we get to the dreaded mathematics. Canberra now have the opportunity to work out what that looks over the coming weeks. Cows, Panthers, Roosters, Dragons. Pain, suffering, torture, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. I don’t blame people that check out at this point. Look after yourselves and your mental health. Lord knows this team isn’t going to help.

This season has often had the feeling of helplessness. Constantly swimming upstream against the challenges of youth, injury, conservative game plans and roster decisions. That it is almost entirely out of Canberra’s hands feels almost fitting. Too often in the Stuart regime the focus has been on getting the game to a 50/50 and hoping things fall our way. They didn’t in this game and they haven’t this year. It’s not a sustainable plan for a season and it won’t work again next year. More is needed.

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