BY DAN

Hey mate. You going ok?

Me? Nah, not great. I wrote the Review while sinking doubles at the airport bar. Ever felt lonely? Try drinking by yourself in Canberra Airport on a Sunday night after a soul-destroying loss. Purgatory would have felt cosier. I arrived home at midnight, woke up at 3am replaying the game in my head, couldn’t get back to sleep, so went to the gym at 5.30 and smashed a PB on some deads. Anger as a performance enhancement. Get angry I guess.

Still, it wasn’t a wasted weekend. I got to meet so many wonderful people of the Canberra Raiders online community. Some I’ve known online for years but never met in person. Some I only ever get to see in Canberra. A few people said some incredible things to me. Leanne at the game and John on the plane, you have no idea how important your kind words were — they’re holding me up today. So there was some good to take away from the weekend.

There was good for the Raiders too. Yes they suffered the most heartbreaking loss I can remember outside the ’23 and ’89 grand finals (thankfully on the right side of the latter). But they also proved that they’re capable of winning finals games. Yes the game management wasn’t great. They were cooked by the end. But they won the game twice, and had other opportunities. This can work.

Lessons and all that are fine in theory, but we won’t know until we do if the retrospective holds. It’s one thing if it’s young players doing things they shouldn’t. That’s why I won’t hold Owen Pattie’s foray against him. But when your experienced players are doing similar it’s a useful reminder that finals footy is a different beast.

Still, having that one under the belt will help, even if wasn’t so much forged in the fire as scalded like the T800. The problem of course is two fold. The first is that their opposition, the Sharks, had a fairly happy finals round one. About as swimmingly as a shark could want. No mental scars there, just happy footy, and a full week turnaround before they play a team that went 93 flippin’ minutes on Sunday. They didn’t exactly look brilliant, but disciplined, effective, and capable of testing the Milk if they’re off their game.

Fighting through the mental and physical exhaustion plaguing the Raiders will be quite the challenge. The turnaround is magnified by the nature of the game, both in length and ferocity. In a game with the ferocity of State of Origin, Canberra were cooked by the 65th minute and had another 30 to go. Add the mental exhaustion of winning the game twice only to have it ripped away, and you can understand if the players aren’t quite up to it.

As Sticky said, if you’re not hurting right now, you shouldn’t be doing the job. He says the players will dust themselves off but that’s easier said than done. Games like that take a toll. Rest is at a premium, and Stick is clear they won’t be doing much this week. As I finish this the Mal Meninga Medal is occurring. Hopefully it’s a quiet night and a sleep in. That’s what I need and I did not destroy my body only to lose my soul in front of 25000 people.

The players, for what it’s worth, are saying the right things. Go on social media and see Joey Taps or Tommy Starling’s framing of the event. A different route to the same goal. Doubling down and stacking the odds. It’s enough to get the flame in your heart, extinguished by the oxygen being sucked out of the ground when Ben Hunt’s field-goal hit the upright, flickering again.

There’ll likely be no changes on the field. Papa got through 50-odd minutes which suggests his ankle is fine. Of the pack, only Zac Hosking, Tommy Starling and Hudson Young really played exorbitant minutes. Simi Sasagi, Ata Mariota and Owen Pattie can all expect earlier and bigger introductions this week. They’ll feel fresh as a daisy, physically at least.

I’ve seen talk about Matty Timoko’s sore shoulder. If there is an actual problem there the solution is established (Simi to centre, Nicholson on to the bench). It maintains the flexibility of the roster that has served the side so well. It’s good to have such clarity.

Canberra have demonstrated the capacity to beat the Sharks. Much like the win over the Panthers, their victory back in round five was one that took until the last moment to emerge. But similarly to Mudgee, they were the vastly better team for much of it, but it just took the long way round to get there. As Sunday showed, you need to take your chances when they’re presented, because winning it at the last minute is apparently open to everyone.

What lies ahead is the hard road, but it’s hardly untraveled. Canberra have beaten all comers in their path. Plenty of teams have won grand finals from this position. Even the Panthers. You’ll remember it’s a similar path traipsed by the greatest rugby league team in history back in ’94. You can lose in the finals and still win the chip. But the margin for error is gone, and Canberra have no more time to waste. All there is now is winning.

So chin up mate. Yeah it was a tough weekend but we’ll get through it together. There’s only one way forward now.

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