BY DAN

Did you enjoy it?

My, how byes feel different when your team is actually playing quality footy. I floated through the weekend, barely even annoyed by the seasonal stuffiness weighing down my eye sockets. Normally bye weeks are a sanctuary, a place to hide from the hurt. But even the Carbone news couldn’t keep me down. This bye week was a time to pontificate, to sit like on my couch like a King watching a battle, surveying the rest of the league having to struggle through the mud. Or a landowner watching others till his field. Ah, it’s good to have land.

We noted in the offseason the Raiders bye structure was going to be a challenge to overcome, particularly because of the tiring nature of the first 14 weeks of the competition. Having successfully overcome that challenge as much as anyone could have realistically wished, they now face the challenge of getting up again. That will be a difficult one, given how much they’ve put into the first half of the year. When you’re pushing yourself to exhaustion then sometimes a rest can be the first time you notice how tired you are.

Expectations are now elevated, as pointed out by the Canberra Times this week, and with that comes the pressure you put on yourself and the fact that other teams will now actually be game-planning for you. Canberra have already identified things they are trying to improve, but the necessity of doing so is only heightened by the stakes.

If the Raiders do need something to coalesce their minds around, it’s the opportunity presented by this first ‘between the byes’ period. Canberra enter the period on 11 wins, and have three games to play in the period. Should they take all three they would enter the next bye on 14 wins. In July.

Why’s that significant? In the NRL era there is only one season (2018) where fourteen wins wouldn’t make the finals. 2018 was an extremely weird ladder. The top 8 sides finished two points apart (first through eighth were all on either 16 or 15 wins). That does not look like that’s the kind of year we’re dealing with currently. Shit the Raiders finished 10 and 14 with a positive differential. That’s not very chaos ball is it? The players will be focused on a game to game basis, but getting to 14 is a significant mini-goal that can be achieved much earlier than any sane person expected.

The challenge now is actually winning the games. As many have noted the draw isn’t heavyweights (wait, does that mean we are the heavyweight?). Tigers in Campbelltown, Knights in Newcastle, and the Dragons back at home. Those are three beatable teams who are in varying amounts of disarray at the moment. Canberra will be favourites in all three, and if they run the table will have basically guaranteed their finals position in freaking July. What a wonderful thought.

As Coach Stuart was keen to emphasise after Josh Papalii’s 319th game celebrations, the Raiders will not win every game. It’s a tough competition and they are still learning and fixing. Stumbles will come in that process, and as Coach Stuart said, the horizon remains and trajectory remains positive. As much as #WMNLA, Stick is trying to keep feet somewhere in the approximate vicinity of the ground. One way to do that is to focus on the first intent of any season: playing finals footy.

Right now they have an opportunity now to seal their position for September before they enter their second bye. Further opportunities will come in the next bracket that we don’t want to talk about until we need to tempt that fate. For now though they need to focus on winning these three games, starting with the Tigers on Friday night.

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.