BY DAN

Vegas baby. Vegas.

The Canberra Raiders draw this season is uniquely influenced by the obelisk in round one. Raiders. Warriors. Vegas. 11am normal human time, Sunday March 2. Everything flows from that. Canberra’s opening rounds. Their bye location. Probably even the general flow of the season. It’ll all be influenced by that first week.

Not determined though. The teams that played Vegas went 50/50 in making the finals, though I think most were surprised which two missed out. The sample size is too small, too influenced by a myriad of factors (Kevvie!) to get too worried about outcomes at this stage.

At the very least it makes for a challenging start to the season. Their opening week opponents, the Wahs, will be smarting after a disappointing 2024 and will want to pursue redemption in a similar vein to the Milk. The place and space they’re in will be unfamiliar. Hopefully it’s a good start.

But after that what challenges await?

THE START

Jesus Christ that start.

If last year can be taken as “normal”, normally you’d play the other Vegas teams to start the season. There’s no reciprocal roundabout this year. Instead the Raiders will be playing the Broncos in round two. At home. It’ll be March, which means whatever vibes you might have about freezing the Broncs out will be mostly pointless.

Then we go away to Manly and the Cows (North Queensland in March. Pray for our English boys), before coming home to the Sharks, who have been a terrible match up in recent years. That’s five teams out of five that will be expecting to play finals this year.

Doing that with the after effects of Vegas will be a challenge. The question of how you’ll go dealing with jet lag will be consistent and impossible to quantify. You can’t even compare last year because of course the Vegas teams played Vegas teams for the first month. So everyone was on equal footing when it comes to the schedule.

But it’s a big start to the year, and the Raiders could be 0-3 or 0-5 after the first month of the season. Stealing a victory or two through this period will be a big deal.

EVERYWHERE MEN

There’s a bit of travel. Vegas, Townsville, Darwin (v the Eels), Auckland. It’s not ideal, but it’s also only really two games they wouldn’t normally have. One of those they made the pitch for, so it’s hard to complain.

Regardless it’s a challenge they’ll have to manage, like most teams do, and they have at their best. Their most disappointing performances recently seemed to be mostly located at home anyway, so maybe a bit of travel time will be good for them.

BYE BYE BYE

The thing about the Vegas trip is that you get a bye before you have byes. Because Vegas is part of a split round one, you get to play one week, rest the next, and it not count as a bye. Lord knows what the impact of the jet lag is for professional athletes. Soccer players fly half way around the world on a whim and seem fine (to me at least). I lean towards an earlyish bye being useful in this circumstance.

Unfortunately the Raiders don’t get an official bye until round 15. After that it’s 19 and 24. That means the first half of the year is going to be exhausting, particularly if they lose players to bad things that I don’t want to mention because there’s no wood to knock on.

SAVE THE MAGIC

I thought there would be pay back for Vegas. Either karmic, or contract driven, I was certain that Las Vegas would mean no Brisvegas. But how the people demand the Milk. How the people breathe for the Milk. How the people yearn for the Milk.

So much that the Raiders are being held to the last game of the round. This is obviously because the NRL knows that if it keeps us until last the punters will stay. Such is the gift. Having the Broncos as the warm up game just makes it even more of a showcase.

That, and the Storm are so terrified of playing us at AAMI they moved their home game to Lang Park, a place they have a much better record against us at. Cowards.

TV GAMES

Free to air games are important for attracting sponsors for obvious reasons. Six games isn’t a lot. The Eels get 117 by our count. Last years wooden-spooners, the Wests Tigers, get seven. It speaks to Canberra’s selling power and perhaps how everyone thinks the Milk will go this year.

But I remember the days where the Raiders barely got on free to air more than Carols by Candlelight. So I guess I’m taking this as a reserved win.

6PM GAMES

Three late Sunday games and one Friday is disgusting frankly. I hate them. These games should be reserved for other teams because it would be more convenient.

SHORT TURNAROUNDS

Just the one and it’s gross.

Round four in Townsville on a Saturday becomes round five in Canberra on a Thursday. That’s fucking disastrous. The Raiders will be rushing to the airport Saturday night to make sure they get the last flight from Townsville that night. They certainly won’t get back to Canberra until the next day. It’ll only be four sleeps at home before they’re out there again. That’s a tough trip.

SYDNEY!

Only three games in Sydney this year which feels low.

MILESTONE WATCH

The main one is that Josh Papalii, should the ACT justice system allow, could go past Jason Croker’s 318 games for the Raiders. By my count that would be at home against the Bunnies. Someone tell Damian Cook he’s invited.

Danny Levi may go past 150. Corey Horsburgh might crack a 100 if he can stay fit, as will Matty Timoko, Jamal Fogarty and Emre Guler. X, Bert, and Kaeo could crack 50 for the Milk.

STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE

This is more of a reminder than something we saw. I do this every year, like a police sergeant telling his troopers to be careful out there. You’re going to see a lot of stuff in the next couple of days about strength of schedule. You can see how I feel about these assessments here: but the TLDR version is that they genuinely aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. There’s so much change between seasons that projecting performance of teams between years is silly. While some things seems permanent (hello ‘Riff and Melbourne), the rest of the eight can happily shuffle around like your Dad just hit the dance floor at a wedding.

Did you knowingly bank on the Broncos being bad before last season? Souths? The Dogs being good? The Cows might have been the least serious 15 and 9 team in rugby league history. They beat the Raiders twice. Easy draws become hard when you’re not good at footy. Hard draws become easier when you are. Outside of situational issues like short turnarounds and noting where tough periods might be, the assignment of a draw of easy or hard before the season is pointless. It’s one of those things that’s only really clear in hindsight. Or as we said back in the day:

I have no doubt that ease of draw can play a role in where the Raiders finish. But trying to ascertain the measure of that ease ex-ante is nothing but a way to pass the time until the season starts. 

So until next year. Vegas baby.

I am imploring you to sign up below for the mailing list. If you won’t at least join us on BlueSky or like the page on Facebook, or share this on social media and I’ll tell you why solidarity is all you need. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not.