BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders 24-20 victory over the Cronulla Sharks was courageous. This was not a hope and prayer but a hard earned celebration of what has been good in this season. A tough battle against a good football side, won because they had the courage to seize key moments. This game will be remembered for a last minute try but it was won in the 79 minutes before that. These are the games that can define teams. Let’s hope it does.

This had all the potential to be a referendum on who this team was. A short turnaround, sapped from the Townsville heat. A crackdown coming that was so clearly going to impact them (and did). A potential top four side destabilised by some random losses keen to make amends. Previous iterations of this side have wilted in easier circumstances. The comforts of home wouldn’t mean much – the Sharks put 40 blot on them at this place last year. Winning this would would take courage, resilience and a commitment to a game plan for eighty minutes of football. All those things present in the first two weeks that suddenly disappeared in an obstruction in Manly. This was Canberra’s opportunity to prove who it was. You can’t fake the funk.

The plan was straightforward, and was a reversion to what worked against the Warriors and the Broncos. The middle had to use its agility to make the Sharks own middles make multiple efforts. Through changes of direction (either with feet in the line, or through passing), through offloads, and through winning contact. Then turn that into movement, allowing the halves to run at the line and let the edge backrowers, and centres, hit a hole at pace. It relies on smaller changes, tinier opportunities that happen in tighter spaces. It’s not a strategy that will get you famous, but it’s effective. This arrow shaped attack is working with more ease that the t-shaped version they ran last year.

Canberra’s middle was brilliant in its implementation. Joe Tapine (18 for 160m, 5 tackle busts) had so many critical runs and his five offloads. Corey Horsburgh (17 for 153) was fast footed in the line, and an important connection in shifting the ball. Morgan Smithies, Ata Mariota or Josh Papalii did their roles and then some. Hudson Young and Matty Nicholson did so much work to take middle-set hit ups, and somehow also be available to score three of Canberra’s four tries (and both made a heap of tackles). Tom Starling made 43 tackles in 52 minutes. Owen Pattie get through 28 minutes of the toughest footy you’ll see and not look out of place. Savelio Tamale made a heap of metres (183 to be precise) to help out too.

That is what made their edge attack work, and brought the space and tired the defenders to allow the centres and backrowers to win running straight up, or outside-in lines. Nicholson hit an under-line and took the defenders by surprise with his power and agility. Seb Kris hit a hard line with early ball for the second. The only thing better than his offload was that Young got back onside from his face-ball line in order to catch the try. Tom Starling was able to run across the park and find Young with a kick precisely because Horse and Tapine combined on the previous tackle to create the space to allow the diminutive rake to attack wherever he wanted. And when the game was on the line and they couldn’t get a big shift going to the fat side, it was a strong, straight line from Huddo that opened up the play. Hard edge lines, baby. That shit’s sustainable.

Even in the things that didn’t work there were pleasing signs. A flick pass from Young got Tamale heading down the wing. He should have gone harder at the corner but hesitated. Kaeo Weekes got over the line but it was ruled an obstruction. He looked more threatening at second receiver on the right. I’d love to see him as the second man on the left to stretch some space for Strange to play with. Matt Timoko got more ball in space than he has this season. He didn’t get a real opportunity to put Xavier Savage into space but he always looked tough to bring down.

And when none of this was working the Raiders had a very special weapon. Jamal Fogarty’s right boot got them out of so many jams. He found grass on a pleasingly regular basis, often where he shouldn’t. One Canberra set ended at its own 25 metre line. A strong boot later and the Sharks were starting theirs on their own 25. That’s not how that’s meant to work. It flipped the field in such a dramatic way on so many occasions. His short kicking game wasn’t as noteworthy, but it was like the Hippocratic oath – it never did harm.

It was needed, as was a defence that returned to the integrity of the opening rounds. The line-speed wasn’t the strength this time – such was the pain that Cronulla served back through Addin Fonua-Blake (200 plus metres and it somehow felt like more). But while Canberra couldn’t monster their opposition, they held fast, helping in, and out, wherever was needed. The middle battled their position for eighty minutes with as many wins as losses. And the edges did similar to the vaunted Sharks shifts.

Ethan Strange cleaned up so many misses – most notably his ‘must make’ legs tackle on Jesse Ramien after the Sharks centre had gotten outside Kris was astounding. Tamale chose the right moments to tie in with Kris to make the Sharks throw another pass forward in scoring position. Huddo and Nicho kept making extra efforts. By the time the Sharks took two minutes to take the lead sixty odd minutes into the game it’d become clear that without help from the Raiders, or extreme luck, they didn’t really have a way through.

That’s not to say everything was perfect. Strange and Kris should have done better on Brenton Nikora’s first. Matt Timoko got cold cooked (again), and Savage made the rookie error of turning his body away from the ball, rendering him unable to help. On occasion the middle felt like it was *just* holding on against Fonua-Blake and Hazleton. But that’s what happens when you play good sides. The key is being able to clean it up, and Canberra did that more often than the Sharks bargained for.

There’s still work to do. Their game plan to tire the middles by playing angles and offload tram-lines in is too infrequent in getting to the edges. When they do it looks damaging, but there’s still too much loading up for a shot to be taken. They too often reverted back to one-out running when something more adventurous was a possibility (like Weekes wasting good ball tackles with a dummy-half run and a big line set up to his right getting cold). Weekes still can’t catch a bomb – Canberra got lucky that none of the three bombs he dropped cost them. Matt Timoko still got burned. Their discipline was still poor on occasion and cost them. The Sharks tries came from a penalty, an post-try-set error, and a penalty. None of those were necessary.

But when it mattered, it didn’t matter. Canberra didn’t get frightened by the bright lights. They kept steaming onto the ball. Kept tearing into the game. Their game plan worked to the end, and no better was that shown that in their last try. They made momentum in the set by the interplay between the forwards (a Tapine, Papa, Pattie movement that will result in tries on its own at some point). They shifted to the edge, Hudson pouring through the gap, desperately searching for an opportunity. Xavier Savage made the extra effort and the brilliant play, coming to the other side of the field from his right wing to put a kick to where he’d normally be. Weekes and Simi turned up because they were compelled to. Seb Kris came from the other side of the field to be the last pass. It was a melding of effort, strategy, and character. And it won them the game.

So fuck your crackdown. Fuck the Townsville heat. Fuck the short turnaround. Fuck a ‘top 4’ team getting every fifty-fifty call, every bounce of the ball. Fuck taking two when you’re a man up because you’re out of ideas. Fuck catching bombs, just crush the pricks once it hits the ground. Fuck worrying about resilience. Make another tackle. Fuck being tired, take another run, make someone else miss. Hit a line. Hit a hole. Keep coming and keep coming and then just swaaaaaarm.

Find your favourite quote about courage. They all say the same thing. Courage isn’t about being scared or not. Bravery doesn’t equate to idiocy. True grit comes from knowing just how hard things are, how difficult they will be, and still strapping your boots on and digging in. A deep breath. A wiped brow. Exhale. Grab the next moment. Take the next opportunity. The Sharks hoped Addin Fonua-Blake would. Every Raider made it their own responsibility to wrestle it direct from the devil’s arms.

When the game came to be won they were 13 men pouring into space like they’d been taken by the rage virus. People will say this is a typical Canberra backs to the wall victory, but that understates the quality of the play. They will say that this was a few stray offloads from a disappointing loss and that’s fair. But even before Kris tore from the other side of the field to be the last hands in the game-winning try, the Raiders had proven to themselves that there’s enough good in them to dance with the best.

They played with power, pace, and passion. Their defence was robust. They kicked smartly and well. They defended their errors, showed some ideas in attack and threatened the oppositions line and could have had more points than what they finished with. Sure there was more come-from-behind than Kim Kardashian, but this was a good side fighting eighty minutes to beat another good side.

They did not wilt. They did not shirk their task. It’s a cliche to say, but when the game was there to be won there was no doubt who wanted it more. Who had the courage to take it, and who was hoping the game would be handed to them by circumstance, or the referee, or the entire fucking competition committee. The Raiders were willing to try to win. They played with the aim of winning, instead of preventing loss, and it made all the difference.

Now the challenge is doing that every week.

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