BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders’ 30-20 loss to the North Queensland Cowboys wasn’t last week’s debacle, but it hurt so much more. Instead of showing fight in overwhelmingly difficult circumstances, Canberra couldn’t get out of its own way, allowing a middling team to highlight the weaknesses of their squad. It ended up a morass of poor discipline, inept attack, and concerning defence. They even chucked in a ten minute period where they lost the game. It was all their worst hits.

Like your dad, it’s not that I’m angry. I’m just disappointed. The Raiders knew what was coming and they let it happen anyway. They’d gone from Manly direct to Townsville. The plan was to acclimatize, but when the heat and humidity do the world’s sweatiest tango like that, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been living in a sauna. Breathing becomes hard. You have to find a way to avoid errors. To show impeccable discipline when your brain is sapped of its ability to compute basic functions. It’s a test, but one that good footy teams pass. The Milk did not.

They failed in so many frustrating ways. What’s one thing that is better to have in the heat than not? The ball (do they *survey says* sound effect in your head for me). The Raiders made 15 errors in this game, including nine in the first half. Three of the Cowboys five tries started with out-and-out Canberra Kaeo Weekes errors, and the fifth, game-sealing, try came among a multitude of poor decisions from brains broken by dehydration that it could have been the tail end of a bender. The fourth, well, sometimes you win chaos ball, sometimes it takes you out for a steak dinner and winks at you and holds your hand after dessert.

There will be conversations about Weekes’ place in the side after this and whether or not you’re pro or anti, his ability to diffuse kicks is a problem that has to be addressed immediately. The man is without confidence. The second Clifford try was a guy was thoughts and prayers of taking the catch, and later in the half he did more of it, except it bounced into his hands. That’s not sustainable, and if teams didn’t notice last week, they’ll know now. Bombs away motherflippers.

It was not all on him. There were plenty of errors and moments of ill-discipline from other players at critical moments. Corey Horsburgh had a handling error in good ball, a passing error coming off the Milk’s line, and a backchat errors that marched the opposition down the field. Xavier Savage had multiple handling errors. Josh Papalii got reported for a high shot, then got penalised for a high shot on the very next tackle. In a team where the young players were looking for leadership, the leaders were drinking at a work lunch.

When things went to shit for 15 minutes and Canberra couldn’t stop it felt chaotic but inevitable. They kept running into the machine gun fire. Someone needed to something but no one did. It’s too familiar, and there’s enough experience to know better. But it just compounded, one problem on the other, no individual, and no structure, able to get in the way.

If it was just the poor discipline or isolated poor performance that caused Canberra’s problems then we could pass it off to next week like the Manly game. But more upsetting than those was the Raiders’ defence. Good teams defend bad errors. Shit they did for 30 minutes last week, and the two games previous. But in this game their defence, particularly on the right edge, was so exposed that it wouldn’t have mattered if they had their shit together in other facets. That alone would have been deadly.

The Cows played with pace out on the edges, as we knew they would, and Canberra got repeatedly burned, particularly on their right. The Cows made nine line breaks for the game, and most of them came down this edge. Jaxson Purdue gave Matt Timoko nightmares, and even Jeremiah Nanai got into space around him. He only technically had two missed tackles (one of which was Jake Clifford coming from his inside to put a fist in his chest and go through to score), but that tells you more about that statistic than his defence. It will be painful watching on review.

There was a lack of unity, clarity, and lateral agility out right, and it created pandemonium in Canberra’s defence. It led to one try (Savage playing too tight because he didn’t trust Timoko for the first try) and should have directly led to another two (if not for a Kaeo Weekes try saver on Purdue, and Hudson Young’s helping across to the other side of the field to force an error on a Scott Drinkwater put-down). A penalty goal came at the end of another break down that side. Like Weekes’ ability to take a kick, teams aren’t blind. It may be a matchup thing, and that edge hasn’t been that perpetually bad before. But if Canberra don’t tighten that up, it’ll become more a one-game problem.

But it was not all that right edge. Fatigue hurt the line-speed, and the middle really didn’t have an impact defensively after the first quarter of the game. Clifford’s first try saw him run sideways across a defence that was standing still. The last try came when Owen Pattie held Tom Dearden up long enough for help to arrive, only it never did, as Fogarty, Tapine, and other players stood with feet held down like the mob had thrown them in the river. That’s likely more fixable, but with a short turnaround and a metric buttload of players with citations it might not be easy.

What was equally concerning was the Raiders inability to throw anything back, particularly in good ball. Both teams were cooked by the heat, but only one was able to do anything to exploit tired defenders. Canberra’s redzone attacked looked rudderless, without idea or intent. Entire sets would go by without any clear plan, anything being built to, or a shot taken. They had near 50 tackles in the red zone (compared to 28 for the Cows) and came away with two tries from barge overs and one from a kick contest.

When the ball did go left Ethan Strange looked as unsure and un-straightened as he’s looked this year, Fogarty was unable to test the line with his feet, the consequences of which meant Weekes and Timoko never saw anything approaching space in rightward shifts. Seb Kris never got a chance to hit a line like he did in week one. Tamale and Savage just watched attacking sets go by like they were waiting for the next bus.

A perfect example was their attack during the period Cohen Hess was in the sin bin. Canberra scored one try – a Savelio Tamale barge over. In that period they barely got the ball outside the tram tracks, either in good ball or coming off their own line. Indeed it took Strange coming into to run a fullback line around an offload for the Milk to make anything approaching a line break in the period. Later when they did shift the ball against a tired line Savage got into space and Owen Pattie probably would have scored if he’d been passed the ball. There is joy to be had there, if Canberra can find the courage or the ability to throw it that far.

Perhaps they were taken with the good work of the middle, who admittedly were again good. All the middles looked strong, and did their work (only Papa and Mooney didn’t crack 100 metres). Tom Starling tested the markers anytime he got the chance. Interplay between the forwards nearly resulted in two tries, one to Pattie off a Horse offload, and another when Horse would have been able to dump a similar pass to Young but he dropped the ball in one-on-one contact. Even the Savage break started with Matty Nicholson ball-playing for Simi Sasagi, offloading to Tapine who found X – an entire shift built out of forwards.

It’s a strength of this side, but it cannot be the only way to the line. Working in the middle third is partly for show. It’s designed to force sides to turn their eyes in, and Canberra are failing, or unable, to find the pace to play to the space on the edges it should create. Players look slow to the ball, they look unsure when they get it. They have no shape, no plan, none of the intent that existed in the first two weeks. Last week we blamed it on a lack of ball. They had plenty in this game and the result was, for all intents and purposes, the same.

It’s frustrating but there were still some silver linings. Ata Mariota’s continued improvement in the last few weeks has been exciting. He looks fast and powerful, and got 44 minutes in this game in recognition. Savelio Tamale led the team in yardage, only had one issue on a high ball and generally looked willing and able to put a dent in the defence. Owen Pattie’s 40/20 with minutes to go is just really exiting. He gave immaculate service and in attack seemed to actually have a plan. He’s ready for a bigger role. But these are bits, and they happened outside the bounds of the team’s progress.

All we’re left with though is problems. The edge was unreliable in a way it hasn’t been since Terry Campese’ kneeless body traipsed the green. Kaeo Weekes needs to work out how to do basic functions of his job. The team needs to work out how to get the ball to outside backs running at holes rather than slowly meander across the field like old-timey firemen passing a bucket. The middle was powerful but what happened to the pace of the early weeks? Was that all from Zac Hosking? Why is my well-being so tied to whether they fix these problems? Ok the last one isn’t their problem.

The Sharks are waiting on a short turnaround, smarting after a loss of their own. If there’s ever been a team that likes to attack edges it’s them. Brayden Trindall won’t die wondering if Weekes has learned to catch. Cronulla won’t be so forgiving if Canberra gift them the ball in position to make their lives hell. It’s another week and another bad matchup.

Two weeks ago we were so high we were wearing the clouds like slippers. Last week we were hoping that one week was an outlier. Now the cold ground of the season has come to meet us. As we all would have agreed before round one this is the kind of fits-and-starts inconsistency we expected to see in this team.

It doesn’t make it any less frustrating though, especially when they know what is possible. What they can do and have done. This team has been better than this, and it’s so disappointing to see them revert to the worst of them.

I hate this and you do to, but we love each other and that’s all that matters. Do me a favour and like the page on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or share this on social media. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not.