BY DAN

Losing 40-10 is hardly how you want to end your trial season, as the Raiders did against the Cronulla. But Coach Stuart doesn’t care about trials, and Canberra showed enough to be satisfied, if not excited, about the foundation they’ve laid for 2025. There’s a heap of work to do if they’re going to more than solid and chaotic though. There’s not much time but a man can dream.

In the leadup to this game we heard incessantly about the dimensions of the ground. It was going to be smaller. The space that mattered would be shrunk to fit what would be occurring in Vegas. Little did we know that Coach Stuart would pull the starters so fast that the temporal dimension was shrunk to fit too. Kaeo Weekes came off after around 18 minutes and the rest of the starters followed in a steady procession between then and halftime, when Ethan Strange and Jamal Fogarty were pulled. Somewhere between a quarter and half a game. That’s how much Coach Stuart thinks a pre-season game matters.

In the part where it was firsts on firsts Canberra were competitive, and arguably dominant. Through the first quarter of the game they’d outgained their opposition by 150 odd metres, and generally were getting through their sets like a team that knew what they were doing. Through a mix of hard-nosed but thrill-less football, and some helpful Sharks errors, they were finding themselves in good positions to score.

In doing this plenty of the players looked fantastic in a familiar way. Josh Papalii only had five or so carries but looked fleet in his movements. His dancing feet in the line were reminiscent of a man with less miles on the engine. He may not be a fifty minute middle this year, but he’ll still contribute. Trey Mooney looked comfortable in the first stanza alongside him. Hudson Young was doing his stuff. Matty Nicholson too got to spread his long legs a few times and defended well. And Morgan Smithies has a flash new haircut.

The backs got in on this grind. It’s so pleasing to see how reliable Xavier Savage is in exit sets now. For a guy that shouldn’t be able to, he routinely physically dominated whomever tried to tackle him. Weekes’ yardage game became the Raiders first try. That shit shouldn’t be repeatable but he’s doing it so often it’s becoming a habit. Matty Timoko flattened Brindall (Braydon Trindall) which made me think of Cam Munster and smile. Seb Kris ran angry a few times which was pleasing. The only minor eye-brow raise was that Savelio Tamale got monstered a few times on his runs. I had thought I might include here about how his grip on the other wing spot for Vegas wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped. Then everyone that followed him sucked so hard that there are now zero golf balls in Canberra needing to get through garden hoses. So he should be fine.

Canberra looked great cycling through the dogfight between the twenties, and they were supported by a stout defence, again. The Sharks didn’t really threaten against the first unit – though admittedly they didn’t try much. It was a battle for field position and the Raiders were winning. A shout out to Tommy Starling here. It’s becoming increasingly obvious how much the Milk rely on having an above-average defender at nine. It’s a message for Owen Pattie. If he can make the grade defensively that’s more than half the battle. But even when the Sharks did shift in the early part of the game hearts were not in mouths. Whatever work has been done on that side of the ball seems to have worked (for the starters at least). And it contributed to plenty of position and possession.

The upshot of winning the field position battle was that the Raiders had plenty of chances to play show they’d grown from last year’s attacking struggles. At one point they’d been tackled 16 times in the opposition red zone (to just three going the other way). They did score twice, once from the aforementioned Kaeo Weekes going Mullins v Newcastle 1994 (I’m not even linking it, you know what i’m talking about). The other was a kick error. Neither were Canberra building up pressure on the line or running a well worked move. They only had limited opportunities but it’s worth keeping an eye on. It could be inherited trauma from last year’s team. Points need to follow dominant field position the Milk had. Other teams won’t be so generous.

Jamal Fogarty played smart and kicked well but didn’t create any opportunities that didn’t come from kicks. Kaeo Weekes only got the ball once in a position to attack the defence (in the redzone that is). Too often the Milk got caught in a corner, running out of space with key decision makers moving sideways too readily. Ethan Strange was particularly guilty of this. He still looks best heading north-south. In the absence of space he tends to head wider, and it cramps his outsider attackers. He’d be better off playing face up and utilising Young and Kris. He did later in the first half. I hope he does it more in the season proper.

It’s not fair to say from this 20 or 30 minute burst that it’s not there. There were too many circumstantial obstacles and too few opportunities. It’s too early in the season and Coach Stuart is too intent on not showing his hand in February. It’s not a five alarm chilli (two and a half tops). But gee would it be too much to ask for something other than breaking down the door with our heads? This self defeating, inefficient, chaos reliant attack is something that has needed to be addressed for a few years now.

Straightening up the attack to allow more width may also require more dominance from the middle third and more creativity from nine. That may come with the return of Joe Tapine and Corey Horsburgh. More space for the outside may come with the insertion of a hooker with more attacking gifts. It may be a function of a narrow field, or require more innovation from the coaching staff, and most importantly time for young players. It may also require me to not hyperfixate on how they score points and just learn to embrace the weird and wonderful fact that they do. Winning is the key, and they were doing that while the first string were out there.

Deservedly so too. It wasn’t pretty but it’s early and they looked comfortable in literally everything else they did. The defence continued to look sound and unfazed by what one of the best attack’s in the game was throwing at them. They had clear plans to get around the ground, where they wanted to kick to, and they were doing it easy, for the most part. That’s a premiership contender they were playing. Outplaying. So they didn’t get to cohesive sweep movements. Let’s call it something to aim for before we start drinking the sadness whisky.

A different game occurred when the starters got pulled. That’s where it really went to shit. It was Canberra at its worst. Errors upon errors led to tries indirectly (through gifting attacking sets, sometimes on the back of attacking sets) and directly (at least three players dropped kicks that became tries). Penalty after penalty compounded the matter. There were some glaring defensive mistakes from people who should know better.

Ata Mariota fell of Addin Fonua-Blake on one soft try (though he should have had over the top help from Myles Martin). Trey Mooney did similar on another (though he similarly should have had help from Bert Hopoate). Speaking of Hoppa, he routinely got caught out in the wrong position at centre, and it led to at least two tries and one blown try. He’s run the ball really well this pre-season. Looked sharp and powerful. But, defensively at least, he’s not a centre.

It’s easy to handwave this because it wasn’t the starters, and the Sharks kept there’s out there for the best part of sixty minutes. But it was players that are pushing to be be part of that 17. It was players that we will need to be better at some point this season. It’s an inevitability. That period of play has to be an outlier, even from a second unit.

It wasn’t all bad in that period. For the second week in a row Chevy Stewart looked comfortable ball playing at first receiver, and threw the most at the defence in that role out of the first or second string team. He again looked sharp as a runner. He didn’t get into top gear in this game, mostly due to lack of any decent ball, and he had *another* kick error. He’s definitely behind Weekes for me, but I don’t see the stress others seem to feel. Ethan Sanders didn’t get much of a chance to do anything but tackle and kick, but he did that perfectly adequately. I thought Manaia Waitere looked strong carrying the ball when he came on. Noah Martin too did fine without much opportunity.

If there’s a takeaway from this is that Canberra have the basics sorted. They’ll compete in the middle. They’ll tackle their hearts out, and hold their structures in defence. They’ll kick well and score points in opportune ways. That’s a solid foundation for a good footy team. Is there more than that? Well we don’t know now, and we probably won’t know for a while. But the road to finding out starts in Vegas.

Let’s start the show.

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