BY DAN

In Friday’s game against the Wests Tigers the Canberra Raiders felt a bit flat.

This was both surprising and understandable. Surprising because the Raiders have made their bones this year on playing an upbeat and dynamic style. Punching like an arrow through the middle of the park, turning their edges back under, terrorising any middle defender that showed any sign of weakness, or tiredness, or even kinda hesitated before telling you his wife’s birthday.

It was also understandable. As we said in the Review, the Milk have played 14 weeks straight of high octane football, desperate to prove their worth. Fighting against the noise, the expectation, being the extension of their coach’s seeming deep desire to tell the big wigs at NRL HQ in Sydney to suck a bag. They travelled everywhere, man. Saw the sights in Vegas, in Auckland, in Townsville, in freaking Darwin.

All these things took it out of them over a period. You can only red-line for so long. As anyone who’s gone through something I like to call existence, you can keep up the life-adrenaline for a while, but when you finally get a second to rest is when you start to feel it. Think of every time you’ve felt yourself come down with something the moment you arrive at a holiday destination. Life be like that sometimes.

Other teams are having the same problems. The Storm only just got past the Bunnies. The ‘Phins lost to the Knights (who might be good again? I don’t know). The Warriors lost to the Panthers. The Sharks lost to the Broncos. It’s that time of year where things can get wacky.

That’s not to say the byes hurt. The rest is needed. The bodies will be stronger in September because of it. But coming back from a break into a cold night in Campbelltown isn’t exactly the kind of thing that will get the juices flowing. That they kept out a team desperate to win, playing with the zeal of a convert, is a testament to the sustainability of what they’ve built.

They did discover the limits of this though. This new battle of being the hunted, rather than the scrappy hunter, is one that others have them circled on the draw. Their first 14 weeks, and the ladder position of the teams they’ll be facing mean that last Friday will be more common that one might hope. When you’re effectively thinking about the finals in June it can make the hum-drum of regular season footy seem exactly that. This is only exacerbated by the bright lights of Origin footy drawing eyes away from Friday night football.

There are things they can do beyond firing up to manage this. On Friday they had a really difficult time starting sets. Neither Jed Stuart nor Kaeo Weekes is a strong yardage runner. Weekes is a typical ‘home-run or no run’ type, and Stuart’s levers are so long that it seems easier for defenders to get into his body and stop him from getting to his belly.

Xavier Savage is now the Milk’s best yardage man in the back three. He only had seven runs in total against the Tigers (for 54m), surely one of the more confusing state lines in recent memory. The total isn’t an season low for X, but given he averages more than twice that, and with the added absence of Sav Tamale and his workhorse yardage work, it just didn’t make sense.

Eagle-eyed at-the-ground witnesses suggest he spent a lot of time out on the wing looking for an early kick from Jamal Fogarty. As smarter people (shouts to the derscord) will tell you, that’s fine as a sneaky plan, but when you’re without the Hotness, it’s a lot to put on Weekes and Jed. Either way, Canberra clearly need better yardage work from their back three. It puts an elevated floor in the back-and-forth of the grind that allows the middle forwards to expend their efforts elsewhere (like defence). Savage’s increased involvement is critical to that

The other thing they’ll need to do is make sure that their middle rotation remains strong. They probably got lucky in that Morgan Smithies was not suspended for this incident. Regardless he wasn’t perfect coming off the bench. More than any other game this season his carries felt less effective, reflected in the fact that he only picked up 50 metres on the ground. I agree with the suggestion that the balance of the team works better when Josh Papalii is one of the bench weapons.

The challenge there is maintaining the defensive rage if Corey Horsburgh, and Morgan Smithies, the two best defenders in the middle, are both in the same rotation. Coach Stuart has gone back and forth with this throughout the season, and in the absence of Zac Hosking’s multi-faceted capabilities off the bench then they need to find a way to maintain that punch through the middle forty.

Over the coming weeks middling teams are going to aim up. The Knights are first up, having beat Redcliffe, pushed the Roosters and beat the Sea-Eagles in recent weeks. Canberra can’t hope to just out-enthuse them. Other teams have nothing to lose, and the Raiders are made men. Continuing to find ways to improve through this difficult bit of the year will put them in good stead for the end of the season.

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