BY DAN

Ricky Stuart wasn’t panicking after the Raiders leaked points hand over fist in the second half in Saturday’s game against the Bulldogs.

I’ve been telling you all that for a week…We’re a brand new team and that’s just part of the journey….It’s just part of our brand new footy team….We were probably replicating other teams that we’ve had over the last month where we come out in the second half, we get a lot of momentum, we get a lot of football…and we come back and score tries.

Thanks to Sydney Milk Syndicate for that quote.

Chalking it up to development is one thing, but Canberra a good footy team who need a better way to interrupt their opposition. Six tries in the second half was a lot. But five tries in 20 odd minutes was worse. As we noted in the Review, it’s not the first time the Raiders have lost a game because they lost their way for a quarter of the game. The Manly and Cows losses both had similar periods of chaos and catastrophe. Shit even the wins have had it. The Phins scored four tries in twenty minutes. The Titans three in twenty. The Broncs two tries in two separate seven minute periods.

Are they just losing their minds for a short period of time?

Undoubtedly this is a feature, not a bug of the NRL this season. I’ll let smarter people than me (hello Rugby League Eye Test) work out why that’s the case (my guess is something about the combination set-restarts and the ‘crackdown’ on high contact meaning teams can’t use physicality as easily to control the ruck), but it seems unequivocal that no lead is safe. Just this weekend two 20 point leads and three 14 point lead got run down (for a record of three wins and two losses). Last week it was it two 16 and one 14 point lead. As Stick pointed out while making the above comments, the Raiders have been the beneficiaries of this on several of occasions this season. Should they just get used to the tide?

Momentum in its nebulous form is a subjective idea, so rather than chalk it up to something like that let’s identify it comes from variation the expectation, and recognise that sometimes these little runs happen because high risk plays all come off at the same time. Against the Titans it was three tries from three kicks that would rarely bring one try, let alone all three. Against the Phins there was last-tackle grubbers from centres, double chip kicks and chaos. Chaos and variation. It’s all the rage.

Leaving this as a ‘oh well’ and moving on isn’t how good teams function. Good teams overcome the in-built features of the game. So if conga-lines of points are how its going to be, then the Raiders need to find a way to remove, or at best, mitigate the impact of those runs.

There’s plenty of ways to do that. On Saturday Canberra tried to compress their line and up their contact early on post try sets. That’s all well and good, but when you’re edges are struggling then if the opposition can get outside the pressure there’s plenty of space and fewer defenders.

Fixing your edges is probably also something that shouldn’t just be a problem for the garden. Not because edges are a weakness that is specifically prone to points – it may be. Rather any area that is readily targeted needs to be sufficiently protected. Matty Nicholson’s injury makes that job a little harder, but it was a problem before he was injured too. Smarter decision making, better contract. There’s a bunch of moments conspiring to collaborate on collapses.

I’m no coach but it would seem other options are out there. Back in the day the halfback used to dribble the ball into touch and walk to the scrum. Given it’s now just a handover on the last that’s a less viable (though not useless) option. Fogarty went for a 40/20 and nearly got it yesterday, but that wasn’t until the 67th minute when the damage was already done. Reed Mahoney tried similar in the first half and put it out on the full. It’s not for the faint hearted. Another option would just to be able to pull off something sick, like when Savelio Tamale and Simi Sasagi tried to offload their way out of pain yesterday, just without X dropping it at the end.

Maybe it’s just a matter of mental resilience. There’s no short cut out of hell. Ask Orpheus. You gotta keep your eyes forward and a tune in your heart. Never look back.

I’m not actually sure there’s a single solution but lord knows they need to find one. The Raiders are a good footy team. A key difference between them and the next tier is stopping the madness.

Do us a solid and like our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or share this on social media. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not. I stole the feature photo from the Green Machine Podcast, and they stole it from Steve Allen