BY DAN

However this turns out I will be eternally grateful for the 2025 Canberra Raiders.

Minor premiers. A million wins. A confidence and assuredness mixed with a ferocity of a thousand sugared-up toddlers. The hammer and the nail at the same time. Doing it all when no one believed in you, and most still don’t. Quietly just beating everyone because that’s the job, that’s the plan, that’s the way of life.

Normally we write these tone-setter pieces at the beginning of a week as a note to remind us what’s at stake. But this week is different. It is clear what’s a stake. A preliminary final against the corpse of whoever makes it there out of Melbourne or the Dogs. With every pundit yelling “they’re coming” at the Broncos like it’s a Godzilla movie, Canberra now have the chance to take them down. It’s all upside, baby.

Outside of Raiders-specific content you will spend a lot more time hearing about the Broncos this week. That makes commercial sense. They’re the economic engine of the game. They have more fans, more clicks, more money and generally are just more on the inside of rugby league conversations. It can warp your views about what they’re facing. The Broncos are a quality football team who could win the premiership. But the constant discussion around them can make people forget there’s more to their games than what Reece Walsh does.

Consuming only that content will expose you to the views of the rugby league populace around the Raiders. Expect to hear plenty about Canberra being ‘frauds,’ or recycled lines about Ricky Stuart. You’ll see every stat pulled out and bent out of context. The 50-point rule, the ‘only a top-two defence wins the comp,’ or selective finals head-to-head numbers like the Walters brothers are still running around. At least you’ll get some early-90s nostalgia along the way.

While they’re generally favourable the naysayers focus around two themes of repeatability (which we addressed here) and ‘having another gear’. That’s a fairly nebulous criticism, and one more aimed at Canberra teams of previous years. The fairer critique of past Canberra teams has been that they burned hot during the regular season, hoping sheer effort could paper over deeper structural weaknesses.

This year is different, and if there’s a point of problem it’s that they’ve tended to play to the quality of their opponent and the stakes of the event. Against the Dragons or the Knights or the Tigers they did enough to win. Against the Panthers the result was the same, but the performance more impressive.

The idea that Canberra are not ready for this is silly. They’ve been itching for this for weeks now. They have built a structured attack. They have an effective way to battle the Broncos’ bigs by forcing them into constant and repetitive defensive efforts through their changes of direction through the middle, their offloading, their fitness, and the pace of their bench.

They have a defence that will be tested by Reece Walsh sweeping on the left at Jamal Fogarty and Matt Timoko. But they also know that is coming, as it has in every game they’ve played this season. They’ll also have a back three that will be tested by the high kicking game of Walsh and Hunt. There is no pretence about their weaknesses, and while the lights get brightest at this time of the year, the idea that the Milk can’t mitigate these risks, as they have in 24 games this year, seems a leap in logic.

That does not make this a forgone conclusion. The Broncos are cresting too, and last week was their best performance. But this Canberra Raiders, the one built through the recruiting over the last two years, forged in sweat and blood over summer, supported by a coaching staff that has made change, innovated, and improved how they play, is different. It is not the Canberra Raiders of years past.

They are fearless, not because they are too young or dumb to know better, but because they are better. They are ready for the challenge, courageous and impervious to the bullshit that will come from north of Hall.

And for that, I am eternally grateful for the 2025 Canberra Raiders.

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.