BY DAN

Next year Vena Patuki-Case joins the Canberra Raiders top 30.

Oh, not familiar? Is it because he’s never played first grade outside a brief appearance as part of the bench mob in a preseason game? Hasn’t even played NSW Cup. Shit he only played five games of Jersey Flegg this year because of injury. You know, the stuff that Chevy Stewart graduated from to play Cup Footy the year before he made his first grade debut. Or what Owen Pattie was playing at the start of last year before heading into the Cup team.

But injury and the fact he’s barely even smelt the field of battle of man against man hasn’t stopped the plaudits. The club think he’s good to go. That is shown by the fact they not only signed him up for the top 30 in 2025 before the 2024 season, but provided him with a two year extension in 2025 until the end of 2027. That was while he was out with injury. He has never even played a game of Cup let alone proper footy. Popular characterisations have included ‘the heir of Josh Papalii‘ (which seems something more appropriate to Ata Mariota but I digress), and ‘one of their most exciting forwards‘ (which, given who’s on the roster is quite a statement).

I think it’s safe to say he’s a good prospect. How good is hard to tell. He barely played 30 minutes in the pre-season game. That 30 minutes was in the second half as the backups to the backups were cycling through, and this was the preseason game that most of the first string missed anyway. So what do you call the level? Cup footy? He didn’t disappoint but he didn’t own the game. 7 runs, 55 metres. The best part of 20 tackles. If he hadn’t been a prospect of such high regard you would barely have noticed him. But you know, he was 19 at the time.

While the reports had focused on him ‘tipping the scale’ at 115kgs I didn’t see a player that expected to physically overwhelm his opposition. That’s good because the next step is learning how to be good when everyone is massive. That’s the hard bit of translating what happens in Flegg through the grades. It’s a futile exercise. He might grow and be Trey Mooney hurtling into defensive lines. He might not and utilise the footwork that Ata Mariota has used to make himself a part of first grade. He might do both. He might do neither.

The point is that he is getting elevated to the top 30 as somewhat of a mystery man. When there’s an unknown player in the midst we (me, you, humanity) have a tendency to ascribe them all the things we hope are true about them. It’s one of the reasons, though not the only one, that we can become overly focused on reshuffling lineups to see if you can include every talented player at the club. On this side of the fence all we see is the potential. On the other side they have to deal with the risk.

In this case the club definitely sees the potential. You don’t promise a top 30 spot to a kid who hasn’t played NSW Cup if you’re unsure. You don’t then extend him before he’s even played a proper game against men if you haven’t had long conversations about how good you think he’s going to be. Particularly when he’s just suffered his second major injury in consecutive years. From the outside it looks like a big bet. From the inside they have evidently identified that they’re ahead of the market, able to capitalise on their gains because the rest of the world *don’t know*. Yet.

I don’t think that ‘yet’ will be resolved this year. For all his promise he’s joining the one area the Raiders were not all looking around for solutions in. Trey Mooney and Ata Mariota had trouble getting regular minutes for a good chunk of last year. Pasami Saulo is hopefully back from injury, Corey Horsburgh looks thin. Emre Guler doesn’t appear to be leaving, and the Milk are even allegedly in the market for Leo Thompson. It’s not exactly a straight line to first grade. Maybe he should become an outside back.

Regardless of the queue, Patuki-Case will need games against men first. He’ll need to work his way back from his second significant injury in back to back years. Time on the park is more important than a red carpet ride (title of) through to first grade. We’ll be keeping a close eye on him though. It’s not every day a player comes with this cache before they’ve even stepped into the sunshine.

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Feature image courtesy of NRL images