BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders are flying.

In the lifetime of this blog, this is about as good as it has been. This early in the season in the season at least. There’s been moments of pure euphoria but generally that has been left to the back end of the season. Now it’s only just clocked June and the Canberra Raiders have the most wins in the competition. They have 10 wins and only 13 rounds have gone. It took them until round 25 to make the same mark last season.

Let’s sit with that. The hype is off the chain. Forget the lid being off, the cat out of the bag or any other analog you care to grasp at. The Raiders are flipping lives and narratives. Generations of stale takes are being faced down as we speak. Canberra, so often forgotten by media, are now the story. In what world before today would it make sense to pitch Ricky Stuart: coach, as better than Ricky Stuart: player? Willie Mason and Justin Huro’s Levels Network spent five minutes comparing Owen Pattie to flippin’ Harry Grant and Danny Buderus. Brandy Alexander called the Raiders the best attacking team in the competition. Welcome to your new tomorrow, I hope it’s a long one.

Any Canberra fan will tell you the last thirty years has taught them to embrace these moments. The peaks never last as long as the valleys, and for the Raiders it always feels more temporary than that. But there are obvious reasons to think this is sustainable. Second in points, tries, first in line-breaks, metres, post-contact metres, tackle breaks and try-assists. Even with the caveat that they’ve played more games than anyone, the Milk are in a stratified air they haven’t inhabited in a while. This is no fluke.

There’s no inefficiency here. While the Rugby League Eye Test hasn’t been able to update his ‘expected points’ measure (give him the data you cowards!), Canberra were in the ‘dominant’ quadrant last time the numbers were updated in April. Outside of Sunday’s difficulty adjusting with two new members of the spine, that hasn’t abated since. Even with the hurricane they played New Zealand in, and last night’s scoreless thirty minutes, they’re still averaging 24.4 points a game through May and June. And that included victories over two top four sides.

Canberra are even hanging tough despite injuries and origin difficulties. Zac Hosking has stepped in for Matty Nicholson. Simi Sasagi has stepped in for Hudson Young, and then Zac Hosking. Ethan Sanders for Jamal Fogarty. They’ve built depth at key positions they haven’t had in the past, flexibility into a roster that hasn’t utilised it. Sasagi and Hosking are such key parts of this – almost like the old ‘joker’ card: put them anywhere you need them. They’ll do a job.

But it’s broader than that, and the integration of the youth movement into the starting line-ups has been a boon for depth too. Pattie and Sanders are most recently prominent, but Noah Martin has also opened up his first grade career proving that he not only belongs, but can play across the entire pack (hooker excepte….actually no, you don’t know he can’t play hooker. I’ll believe anything about this team right now). Sav Tamale has become such a fixture that it seems like he’s been there forever. But his league-leading 15 line breaks would be a mind-bending thing to celebrate. Now it’s just another piece of the foundation.

They aren’t flying below anyone’s radar anymore. The Canberra Raiders are out in the bright sun flapping their wings and living the dream. When you’re flying like this they’ll tell you to remember Icarus. The warmth of the light can just as easily bring you down.

But I don’t like that analogy. Orpheus trying to save Eurydice is a better one. When you’re trying to beat the devil and get out of hell don’t look back. Keep fucking going. The good stuff is ahead of you.

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