BY DAN

The path towards the promise land continued to wind its confusing road for the Canberra Raiders. A 28-24 victory over the St George Dragons was more rocks than diamonds from everyone involved. Maybe Canberra got lucky. Maybe they did just enough. What is clear is that they have work to do, but their earned position gives them plenty of leeway in which to do it. We should be so blessed.

This should have been an easier night. Canberra’s engine room made metres hand over fist. Pick your favourite. Every carry that should have been six metres was eight. Eight metres became ten. The entire starting pack cracked 100m (except for Tom Starling). The back five all followed suit, with Matt Timoko cracking 200m, almost exclusively in tough yards. Of these Corey Horsburgh (14 for 170m, 70 post contact) and Timoko were the most impressive in the power game. Ata Mariota was also important in the middle forty.

Rucks were won. The space between 20s was Canberra’s. But they were unable to turn it into points. This was the Raiders trying to be patient, but it felt oddly fragile as their opposition tested them repeatedly in the other direction. The Milk kept punching back on the angle, looking for a lazy defender through the middle. They kept finding resolute and capable defenders.

It wasn’t until late I the first half, and into the second that they began testing the Dragon’s edges, and in doing so proved that Timoko and Kaeo Weekes’ connection was the most important. It could have created multiple tries. It did create one, the first of the match to Xavier Savage, and could have created another on the stroke of half time if Savage had picked up a grubber (or if Timoko had made the pass instead). They all came from the same thing; Weekes getting the ball at second receiver, using his pace to jump outside his defender, terrify a backrower, and let Timoko put a pain on whoever was left to defend.

But in the end only one of their tries came through a well worked red zone movement. Other chances, came from more long range, less repeatable scenarios. Normally they would just grind their way to victory, and at 24-6 and 28-12 that should have been the outcome. It did not however feel safe, and that proved to be the case.

It didn’t feel safe for two reasons. The first is that for a good proportion of the second half they forgot the patient but dynamic football that has been their calling card in 2025. It was replaced with handling errors, poor kicking and ill-discipline. Canberra found too many seven-tackle sets (one of which led to a try), ineffective kicks, or even not-getting-to-kicks. They dropped ball coming out of their own space at critical junctures. They turned it over in attack over minor matters like playing the ball properly. Jed Stuart couldn’t catch a kick, and couldn’t clean up a grubber that became another try. It gave the Dragons more opportunities than their dominated middle deserved.

The second contributing factor was that while Canberra were winning the battle in the middle, they were not having as much fun on the edges. Normally in these pages we often look inwards when it comes to sources of blame, literally, not figuratively. Many problems are born in the middle of the park, but that didn’t feel the case this evening. The Dragons were trying through the middle and failing. They found their success in the opportunities afforded on the edges.

Early in sets it was to Canberra’s right, putting pressure on Jamal Fogarty to be laterally agile, and Matt Timoko to clean up those mistakes. Zac Hosking led the Milk in tackles (41), reflecting how often the ball was coming down that tram-line. Then later in sets that involved shifting to test the other side. The first try came because of miscommunication between Ethan Strange, Simi Sasagi and Seb Kris. Three players ended up defending two runners, and Jed Stuart was left to look a fool.

The final try came when a shifting movement got Tyrell Sloan in space, and he kicked inside for Kyle Flanagan. A further try could have come early in the game but the last pass was forward. Opportunities were bombed heading to the right as passes hit the ground, but it always felt like cover was coming. If Canberra were bending on the right, they were breaking on the left.

Other breaks were made, and Canberra’s edges were consistently under pressure to answer the questions posed by the Dragon’s attack. But their scramble was covering up a multitude of sins. For every miss made by an edge defender they had as many where they were the saviour. It meant that in the end three of the Dragons tries came from chaotic chancey play that on any other night would have resulted in nothing. But in this game a tossed coin landed on the same side three different times. And Canberra were still able to overcome.

While it took a team effort to do it, sometimes it’s a bit more simple than that. Kaeo Weekes, the real King in this game, was the difference. He scored three times, twice in pure home-run, Brett-Mullins-in-Newcastle shit. A grubber hit the ground, a tackle was broken and he was gone. A bomb was taken, Damien Cook embarrassed physically (again in Canberra, this town will haunt him) and it wasn’t so much taken to the house as escorted there via Corvette. A pretender to the throne (King of what?) tried to get in his way.

You have to take a moment with performances like this. Remember these are the best athletes professional sport has to offer in this country. These are people that train professionally to counter these exact moments. These are people that used to make their under 8s, under 10s, under 12 colleagues look silly, in the exact way that Kaeo Weekes made them look silly tonight. That is not usual. That is not normal. This should not happen.

But it did. Again. What Weekes did in this game, and has done so much this season is the kind of variance that so often coexists with teams that *whispers* win premierships. Someone comes of age. Someone does something that teams can’t work out how to counter. How do you stop someone who cannot be caught? How do you close the space on him when he’s just as able to find Matt Timoko punching a hole in the wall like a sledgehammer? It’s a gift. It’s a deal. It’s sale of the fucking century.

It also papered over the cracks. Between the byes Canberra have evidently been just trying to get out of dodge. Biding their time to get Hudson Young and Josh Papalii, then Matty Nicholson, then Savelio Tamale, back in time for a finals run. That they came away from the first inter-bye period with three of three was better than their performances deserved, but recognition that their ‘upside’ so vastly counters their weaknesses to the point of skewing the results.

Right now they aren’t an engine running at it’s finest. But it’s important to remember you don’t win premierships in July. I think Coach Stuart is aware of that, and isn’t trying to rev the engine to overcome the gap. Perhaps this is why Joey Taps spent so long off the ground in this game (he only played 30 minutes, and barely after his first stint ended just after the Milk’s first try). For once Stuart’s solution isn’t for the team to try harder. That’s good. Effort can win heaps of games in July. Everyone is trying come September. Proper problems require solutions more sophisticated than ‘do it but more’.

Perhaps this is besides the point. Unusually, I was in Canberra for this game. It’s my children’s first time here. As inner city Melbourne boys they’ve been overwhelmed by God’s country. They’ve seen bush land next to houses, and it broke their brains to hear there’s kangaroos just hanging out on the other side of the tree line. They’ve seen fog for the first time, unsatisfied with my unscientific explanation that it’s like cloud on the ground. And they’ve seen the stars. You don’t get to see them in Brunswick. Not this many anyway.

As I finish this piece it’s near two in the morning and the sinking cloud covers those stars out the window. I’ve tried and failed to explain them to my boys. That it’s like looking into the past, present and future at the same time. That each one of them has its own story, it’s own solar system, it’s own infinite possibilities of life that may be, may have been, or may come to rise. The sheer number of possibilities, of realities that exist out there can melt your mind. Lord knows what that’ll do to a four year old.

But no matter how many possibilities are out there, we are in the one in which the Canberra Raiders are the best rugby league team. Not just in the NRL. Not just on earth, but in infinite fucking realities. Those stars, and the ones on the football park are reality and possibility, all in one.

Maybe it’s luck. Maybe they’ve earned the opportunity. It may be fragile; it may not last, something that is as obvious as the work they have to do to sustain it. Canberra, as they are currently performing, are not good enough to win the competition. But they have been, and a bye, more health, and a focus on fixing their issues before September are facts that become gifts because of the position they’ve put themselves in.

There’s a foundation. There’s an opportunity. It’s time to take it.

Do me a favour and like the page on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or share this on social media and I’ll tell you how many pints I had with good people before I wrote this (it’s three, he says whispering like a lush, can you tell?). Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not.