BY DAN

It’s a weird and wonderful time to be a Canberra Raiders fan.

After Jahrome Hughes broke his wrist last night, the Raiders firmed into premiership favouritism. That won’t last once the big public money flows to Brisbane as the Reece Walsh hype wave crests this week, but it’s still a new feeling for Canberra fans. Earlier this week even the panel on NRL360 were defending the Raiders’ premiership credentials. What a time to be alive.

Of course it shouldn’t be so surprising. You’re telling me the minor premier is favourite for the ‘chip entering the finals? What a twist! But there are plenty of non-believers. Canberra have beaten everyone in the top eight bar the Dogs, have won 12 of their last 13, and proven they have a formula for success in 2025.

That includes their ability to shift with multiple moving parts and offload through the middle to tire defences, their knack for exploiting broken play off the back of it, and a more polished structured attack in close quarters. As we saw against the Tigers last week, when one part gets shut down (as their offloads were), their upgrades in other areas (such as defence) allow them to find new and different ways to win.

But some people aren’t impressed. As a ‘new’ contender, the Raiders will continue to be poo-pooed until they prove themselves – i.e. win the whole thing. It’s easy to be a naysayer in these circumstances. Winning a premiership is really flipping hard – it’s a small circle of teams that have achieved it. Saying a team are pretenders is just playing the odds. Most teams won’t win, until they do, and all the baked in takes get re-written.

A good example came from the Ned’s Unpopular Opinions podcast following the Raiders victory over the Panthers. They intimated it was a fluke, consistent with many Canberra wins in recent years.  They said this game was a demonstration of the Milk’s tendency to rely on effort and then hope coin flip moments go their way. Further, it was proof to them that the Raiders will not be able to win in September, primarily because this action is not repeatable.

You’ll be shocked to hear, but I think this is reflective of the worst old, staid ideas of Canberra’s success. It fundamentally misunderstands what the Raiders are doing in 2025, and instead relies on ideas that were relevant and true to previous iterations. It’s analysis at its worst: cognitive dissonance with a mic, railing against reality because it doesn’t suit long-held preconceptions.

Sometimes, as eventually happened on the Unpopular Opinions podcast, the critics admit that the Raiders’ ability to keep producing these results might actually be evidence of repeatability. But even that still accepts the superficial dichotomy of “the Raiders win because they out-effort the opposition.” This is contrasted with the Panthers, who apparently haven’t built an entire dynasty on playing with more ferocity for longer, but instead on supposedly more “repeatable” structures.

It reveals two fundamental misunderstandings.

The first is about what success in rugby league requires. Over the last five years we’ve watched a machine destroy the league. The Panthers are unrelenting. They’ve built their success on being more physical for longer than anyone else, grinding opponents down and forcing them into harder and harder decisions under fatigue. It’s never been the flashiest footy, but it’s always been the most effective and efficient. Basic and brilliant. Four on the floor, loud riffs, shouty lyrics. Rock’n’roll, baby.

This is treated as the only way to win because it’s all we’ve seen for five years. Recency bias makes us believe what is now is what has always been. But it’s not the case. The Roosters, the dynasty before the dynasty, didn’t win this way. They did — and still do — make more errors than anyone else. Their structured attack was more adventurous than the Panthers’.

Was it repeatable? The errors may suggest no. The premierships suggested otherwise. There’s more than one way to win a competition. It’s just been a while since we’ve seen it.

The second misunderstanding is about how Canberra actually play. The idea that the Raiders simply use effort to stay in games and then hope for the best was fair enough in previous years. It was their calling card. You could almost predict which games the Milk would be “up” for, and they’d outrun teams in the regular season just by Raidering harder. The middle would compete, they’d hopefully jag a lead, and then hang on like the start of Cliffhanger. Effort filled the gap in impact.

But that’s not this team, and it’s surprising to see people so slow on the uptake. Canberra aren’t winning through effort alone, but through tactical and stylistic adjustments that make their middle more impactful, partly reliant on improved fitness. They’ve sharpened their structured attack, creating consistent red-zone pressure with more complex and creative movements. At the same time, the structure still gives players like Strange, Weekes, and to a lesser extent Hudson Young, the freedom to play what’s in front of them.

Where they have won in coin flips (such as the Sharks game, or the Panthers game) it’s been more reflective a game that hadn’t yet caught up to them. That is, they’ve outperformed their opposition, but through a twist of fate or two, it hasn’t been reflected on the scoreboard. In those matches they’ve had to effectively win the game multiple times, rather than sneaking chances they didn’t deserve.

That’s not to say those games were without luck, but they were also a series of lessons in how to win. Canberra came away from the Sharks game with belief they could compete with the best. Against the Panthers, they stress-tested their field-goal set-ups — using two deliberately different ones, which is two more than they’d ever had before. New teams often need to learn these lessons the hard way, by losing. The fact the Milk have learned them while still winning shouldn’t be held against them as evidence their methods aren’t sustainable.

That can also shape perceptions. Would Canberra be less of a contender if Nathan Cleary’s field goal had landed a foot the other way? Is he less clutch because of it? When margins are that small, all you can do is put yourself in the best position to win. The Raiders have done that in all but one game this year — more than any other team can claim. That alone tells you plenty about repeatability.

Does that mean they’ll win the premiership? Of course not. By the time you read this they might not even be favourites anymore. That shouldn’t detract from what they’ve built, or what they’re capable of.

Do me a favour and like the page on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or share this on social media because love is true and heaven is a Raiders victory. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not.