BY DAN

For just a moment the collective Canberra Raiders community stood in the sunshine. The warmth filled our bones. Contentment filled our souls, smiles across our faces. Life was good.

Like any cut-rate story, before we could even embrace the good times, contentment became catastrophe, happiness became Hades. 20 to bupkus became 32 zip dickhead. 32-20 was the final score and by the end the whistle sounding was relief. Canberra are still a good side but if this isn’t a call to arms then this season, this winning streak, will be nothing but a pleasant mirage.

It was meant to be a celebration. A coronation. The Canberra Raiders were meant to show their best, bask in the adulation of a sell out crowd, and lift the lid on the biggest hype train the city had seen since they put ‘feel the power’ on licence plates back in the day. Instead we got an exposition and it felt as fun as the Spanish kind. The Dogs tortured the Raiders, with their weapons pointed at every weakness the Milk had pretended for weeks they didn’t have. Well they have them. There’s no hiding now.

If it been like that all day then it wouldn’t be so disappointing. The Bulldogs are a very good side. They have an elite defence and pendulum offence that whips from edge to edge with ease. They have talent upon talent at key position. Losing to the top side is no shame. But when you dance with the devil and have a knife to his throat, the regret of an opportunity missed is heavier on the soul.

It’s frustrating because the first forty minutes was as good as the Raiders have played this year. They absolutely smashed the Bulldogs in the middle of the field. Joey Taps had 146m of his eventual 170 odd metres in this half. Zac Hosking looked fast, and tormented the Bulldogs ruck defenders coming back on those angles against the grain. He had a 100 metres and a try before you could recite the Gettysburg address. Hudson Young cracked 100 in the first half too. Morgan Smithies as well. The pack was doing their job, playing strong and fast.

Boy did Canberra play some good footy off the back of it. Hosking’s crash play was just the canary in the gold mine for a Dogs middle that couldn’t keep up. Kaeo Weekes’ scored after getting a second of space on a shift. It was all he needed. Xavier Savage was the beneficiary when Jamal Fogarty recognised a staggered line on the last, passed to Matty ‘Nice’ Nicholson, who’s hands were faster than Fee Herod. Timoko took it straight through a hole, as he does, and life felt good. Real good.

Then when the Raiders set play – the Ata-Papa-Fog-runaround-to-Huddo shift – worked so perfectly, and looked so fluid, I was *this* close to writing about how there’s beauty in everyday things and life, at its core, is a beautiful tune we all hum in unison by our very being. That was gorgeous, a moment, a salve to thirty years of pain. It should have been an the announcement. The ascension. A king taking his throne, surveying his castle, and knowing all was good. Canberra finally were putting the parts together.

But like castles made of sand, it melted beneath us in self-parody. Half time came, the opposition steeled and the game completely changed. Canberra gave up points hand over fist. They did it because their middle couldn’t hold the contact they’d had in the first forty that had allowed them to hold the Bulldogs shift in check. They did it because as soon as the Dogs could shift, they got Stephen Crichton, or Viliame Kikau, one-on-one with Canberra’s centres and what resulted was sadistic. It was so painful and upsetting to watch we may as well have pulled up the cuck chair and let them have at it.

The first try came when Crichton straight burned Seb Kris. The second when Ethan Strange chased Connor Tracy out of his area of responsibility only to watch Crichton saunter through where he’d been. A third should have come when Crichton got outside Tamale and put Tracy into space, but Strange made one of the tackles of a life time to save the try. That was wasted because two second later Matt Timoko came in on Bronson Xerri, and Xavier Savage didn’t follow him. Another try came when Timoko got burned by Xerri, and the defence never really recovered. The final try was Timoko grasping at Kikau’s arm like a toddler for their father’s love. Like a bad father, Xavier Savage had his back turned.

There was a lot to take away here. Timoko’s defence on the right edge has been a source of anxiety for some time. His contact is inconsistent, as are his decisions. But there will be a tendency to put those tries on him alone. On the first Savage should have followed him in and didn’t. On the last Savage should have been ready to protect his inside shoulder and wasn’t. He added a host of handling errors to the mix for his worst outing that I can remember. On the other side Tamale and Strange both made inexperienced errors on one of the best centres in the competition. Kris has been burned before by Crichton and will again. The major shame there was the amount of space given to him – like they didn’t expect him to do it.

Of course this caused by the secret, most confusing bit of the second half defence. What had been a quick line with bruising contact became more spacious and forgiving than a day spa. There was no specific reason for that. Perhaps there’s a bit there about not being able to maintain that defensive intensity for a whole game. But they’d only made 130 odd tackles in the first half. That can’t be a reason alone (or it can, and we should all short sell Raiders options). Without the line speed, without the contact in the middle, Canberra’s edges were not able to keep up with the power and pace of the opposition. It got so bad that the Hudson Young tried to strength a weakness by weakening the strength – moving himself across the middle of the defence when Simi Sasagi came on in a vein attempt to rein in the opposition. It was unsuccessful.

What’s worse was that it broke down so quickly. In addition to the structural weakness in defence, this is a mental frailty. The NRL in 2025 seems to be a game of runs, and no team is more susceptible to them than Canberra. In their losses this year they’ve lost to plot for twenty minutes at its cost them the game. It was five tries in twenty minutes in this game. It was four in twenty-two against the Cowboys. Five in fifteen against Manly. When things go wrong for the Milk they go wrong hard. They need to find a way to stop the ship taking on water.

Quicker changes from Stick may help. He probably left Hosking on for too long initially, and off for too long subsequently. He needed to get Smithies on quicker when the middle defence started to fall over, and then fell over, he was just watching like Millhouse. It shows how much they need Corey Horsburgh. But that’s probably nit-picking. Ringing the changes isn’t fixing something that’s going on in the collective psyche. It may provide a temporary stay, but there’s a problem that needs to be addressed here before we can talk about a serious run.

This doesn’t mean the dream is over, but it’s more realistic. The hype balloon that had built around this game and around this club this week has now deflated. Canberra, in the minds of many, will go back to being the little train that could. While that makes life a bit easier to build for later in the season, it also deflates the expectations of a side that should be leaning into them. This is an opportunity to build a new, proud Canberra not ashamed to have high expectations of itself. Champions don’t hide from the spotlight.

Canberra are not perfect. They can’t keep winning games with forty minutes of football. It’s copium to say this was a loss they needed to have. I think we’re all clear by now that winning is better than losing. But let this be a loss they take a lesson from. Better to know where to aim your training than to tell yourself tales.

They are also not broken. A good team exposed their weaknesses in the cold light of day. That happens. Take the lesson, patch the wounds, get to work. Their strengths were also proven, their upside palpable until it wasn’t. They have a way to win and it works and they can make more of it. They should still have hopes of the highest in their hearts. This is still a good footy side.

But if they want to be great it’s time to get to work.

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