BY DAN

How do you respond to a season-defining victory? One that kept your season, already on life support, alive, expending all reserves of emotional energy in a obstinate display of defiance? How, when results leading up to the game make it near impossible for this game to matter, do you summon the chaos and courage and dogged determination to do it again? You simply do it again. Do it harder. Do it not because you’re a hope of sneaking in to the finals. Not because you’re thinking about building a culture, a way, a belief for the future. But because fuck ’em. That’s why.

How do you overcome having failed to build an attack all season? Just don’t have the ball. Rope-and-dope an unstoppable attack into public exasperation, only able to succeed with an institutional leg-up not seen since the Whitlam years. Tackle like it’s a belief system not an action. Turn *that* into points. Struggle and lumber and push against outrageous fatigue, so pervasive and so strong that players are cramping, stumbling back into the line and just standing there hoping their presence will be a deterrent. Do it and do it and do it again. When the devil says ‘is that enough’ tell him you want more and spit in his face just because.

The Raiders did it again just to prove it wasn’t a fluke. The score this time was 14-12, the opposition, the Eastern Suburbs Roosters, cowed and vexed by the madness they observed, and participated in. Canberra went up against a feted opponent. They found reserves of energy hitherto only known to camels and marathon runners. They showed determination. Guts. Courage. Whatever you want to call it. They weren’t perfect. They weren’t smart. But when there was clawing to be done they did it. When there were inches to be collected they did. And when the waves of fate proved dangerous they just ducked and tumbled and held their breath. It was gutsy. It was pandemonium. It was enough.

Like last week this was won with defence. It has to be when your opposition had sixty percent of the ball. When you have a full 11 sets less of ball than your opposition in the second half, make 100 more tackles across the game. When you are outgained by five-hundred-fucking-metres over that stanza. Twelve penalties conceded, some even actually fair decisions. Twenty minutes – a quarter of the available time – short a player (both weird situations and probably fair decisions). For the game they missed 59 tackles. That’s not how you build victory. That’s normally the stats of a team that conceded 50 and walked away ashamed.

But Canberra didn’t. The 59 missed tackles was as much as testament to repeat efforts than any sign of weakness. If someone got beat there was another body coming to save the day. When the edge defenders were so brazenly fatigued the middles kept pushing out. When the middles were cooked it was Hudson Young and Elliott Whitehead covering in. Somehow the edges, better connected last week than any point this season, were at it again. Even when Jordan Rapana’s injury forced a reshuffle the newly minted versions were robust in the face of constant fire.

It wasn’t perfect. Particularly when the Raiders were down to twelve men their right edge came under constant pressure, and got broken three times in the second half. But the scramble came, and each time forced an extra pass, another effort, that couldn’t be completed. Danny Levi got caught at weakside edge and was beaten but Xavier covered it up. Jennings stepped inside Matt Timoko in the second half and should have had a clean pass to Crichton, but Sasagi put enough of an effort covering across to make the pass harder than the Roosters could handle. A well rested Elliott Whitehead kept closing the gaps that opened up on the inside whenever the ball went wide. And Canberra held on.

In the end the two tries Easts scored came at the absolute edge of the ground. One right after the Milk had started their second period short a player, one with literal seconds to go in the game, and the ball having done so many back-and-forths it could have been Wimbledon. You could pick problems in both, but it feels finicky after a game like this. On this day this is what it took to stop the best attack in the competition. All the ball. All the field position. A player short, a hope drawn. After Smelly was sin-binned the second time the Roosters, through a mix of actual and comical penalties, had 103 sets in a row on the Raiders line. They were held out, and Canberra held on. Again. And again. And again.

It was such a stunningly heroic defensive effort that it’s easy to forget they had to score three times to win the game. That one of these was a direct result of their defence is apt. Matt Timoko scared James Tedesco into bailing out on the ball. Savage showed the spirit and the sprint to pressure Jennings into an error, and then *whooosh* and X was never going to be caught.

The other points were typical. In the brief moments they had the ball the Raiders were intent on playing tight. Win the middle, and hit the Roosters left edge. It wasn’t a subtle strategy, but Canberra have long since dispensed with niceties like structure and shape this season. It was more a case of ‘everyone pile in, we’re going to make Michael Jennings look silly.’ Danny Levi hit Elliott Whitehead with a show-inside, pass-outside crash ball. Smell ran into three bodies but it more than demonstrated the worth of the plan; if three dudes can’t stop a man so old his bones are made from carrara marble, it’s a weakness worth poking at. That was only proved more true minutes later when Adam Cook put Smell into the line, and one tackler wasn’t enough. Sasagi jumped on the pass.

But that was basically all Canberra got to do in attack. The rest of the game was yardage. Matt Timoko (15 for 132m) and Bert Hopoate (20 for 166m) got through a mountain of work. Xavier Savage (12 for 166m) again had critical runs. For the second week in a row Joe Tapine was brilliant despite spending most the game tackling (10 runs for 108m, 46 tackles). But most impressive for me was Hudson Young’s (13 for 124m, 45 post contact, 6 tackle busts and also 45 tackles) continued motor, seven of his runs were in the second half, as the rest of the team (outside Bert and Mokes) were waiting out attacking sets like they were breaks in a sprint session. He kept taking runs. He kept making a person miss (three in the second half), and often this was enough to get the Raiders somewhere approximating the forty, allowing a kick that meant their opposition at least started somewhere near their own line.

There’s the bit here about how this isn’t a way to do things. This is Canberra maximising who they are again. They won’t win consistently playing like this. The reliance on energy and emotion to carry them instead of structure, skill, and all that nerd shit, is a fast path to a mediocre ending. That’s why they are where they are. That’s why they’ve had to beat two of the three best teams in the competition just to keep the embers of hope from burning out.

That is all undoubtedly true. Now they’re all but mathematically out of the finals (and even that maths takes some Arthur Anderson-esque calculations) we can perhaps dispense with the idea they might be more than this. This is the best of them. This is as good as they can get. It’s not a sustainable approach: like Wile E Coyote walking on air only they refuse to look down. They still don’t have an attack, and are too conservative in good and bad ball. They rely too much on emotion, on doing things that are impossible because they’re as stubborn as their coach. One day they will need to make peace with reality, a reckoning with what they are and can become. To change how they do things. To find a more sane and sensible way to succeed. But that is not this day.

On this day we dine on victory because they are insane. We cherish and love these men because they wouldn’t sneak into Mordor. They’d headbutt the gates or shit on a palantir. They’d rather fight three people rather than break bread with one. They are the ID, fuck your ego or your superego. When they can summon this energy they cannot be restrained.

Days like these are why we love sports. When the players on the field prove to us that the sum of the part is always greater when collective will binds them. When people stand with each other they are stronger, no matter what fate or fortune harms them. Today the Canberra Raiders were not perfect. But they showed the best of us.

If you got this far then you are the best of people. Like our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or share this on social media. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you have anything you want addressed.

Feature image courtesy of Getty images.