BY DAN

Hello and welcome to our offseason series on the six big questions facing the Raiders in 2026. This is part V of the series. You can read part I here, part II here, part III here, and part IV here.

“Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” – Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing (1990)

The Canberra Raiders have a seismic challenge in 2026.

In 2025 they were brilliant, their only worthy opponent themselves. The end of the season was an exploded landmine, stepped on first in the panic of the Qualifying final, and detonated with resignation in the semifinal. Now they must put themselves back together, improved, as a paradox: a side to the league is prepared for, and also not taken seriously.

After a 2025 in which they were genuine premiership contenders, their emotional collapse at the end of the season has left the rugby league less inspired than Question Time. Always the easiest team for the commentariat to write-off, the absence of Jamal Fogarty and the surprise of 2025 has made them hard for people outside Canberra to work out.

For the Raiders the challenge is building on last season. Though the media folk won’t have, the coaches of the league will have spent the off-season grinding tape, preparing to counter what the Milk can be at their best. Doing the same will not be enough.

Doing so while incorporating a new spine player, potentially two, will present a challenge to the coaching staff. The Raider’s attacking success in 2025 was in Justin Giteau’s hands. His ability to communicate with his players about how they wanted to play, and to create a system around their strengths built on taking as many shots as possible, brought the best out of them.

From moribund to magnificent, their attack was third best through the regular season, good enough to put 28 on the premiers (though not the 29 that would have put the air back in my lungs). The defence too was improved, though with the caveat of a weakness so glaring you had to look at it through a box like a solar eclipse. Teams will have watched and will adjust.

If there’s an advantage the Raiders have it’s that Giteau’s philosophy will utilise the personnel change to Canberra’s advantage. When your system bends to your players, new faces force new shapes. It won’t be perfect for cohesion initially, but the change will mean innovation not yet spotted on game film. With Ethan Strange switching sides to plug the defensive hole and the growing experience of youth, perhaps the Raiders have the right plan in place.

“Chaos is roving through the system and able to undo, at any point, the best laid plans “- Joseph Chilton Pearce – The Crack in the Cosmic Egg (1971)

And yet another threat, beyond the realms of the mere competition, lurks. Peter V’Landys appears to be pushing through rule changes, yet again. This time, teams might have even less time to adjust than during Covid, highlighting the absurdity of the proposal as well as the haplessness of the process.

As we saw in the introduction of the set-restart in 2020, the expansion in 2021, and subsequent reductions, more ‘six-agains’ means more fatigue (and less interesting footy). Success in this environment rewards a specific type of aerobic fitness, which is hard to adapt for when the pre-season is behind you.

This is obviously not the only change. Other changes seem set up to combat the problem caused by the first. It’s uncertain how teams will adjust to the changed kick off rule but the argument is that this will create closer contests (how good are vibes? You can make them say anything). Perhaps this is why there is also a rumoured expansion to the interchange bench – though notably not the number of changes.

It all throws up into the air what the landscape looks like. The changes may be coming. They may not. The world may be ending. Vlando may invade Greenland. He may not. Should the Raiders be spending their precious training time setting up shift movements or war-gaming kick-off manoeuvres? Should they be tailoring game plans for small ball? How do you prepare when the Mad Hatter may flip the table on a whim?

“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance” – Anne Carson, the Autobiography of Red (1998)

The good news is that Canberra may be well placed to adapt, for two reasons.

Firstly their roster is acutely malleable, flexible in its set up that will allow it to manage whatever chaos is wrought by the administration. The emphasis in recent years in loading up on players with utility value has well placed them to adjust to a game with a quicker pace. Now instead of Hosking, Sasagi or others on the bench representing ‘going small’, it would just be the way of the game. Their youth emphasis may actually thrive in a game that is less heady creativity and more out-and-out speed.

Many players on the roster will be suited to this. Tommy Starling thrived in the initial phase of Vlando ball because the thing he did poorly – pass from the ground – was no longer the prime weapon of rakes. Instead it was three steps in a recovering A defender before releasing possession. Ethan Strange against a retreating defensive line could be a sight to behold. Kaeo Weekes could have a field day with the extra space to run into – that’s how Tommy Trbojevic won a Dally M.

One might even suggest that weaknesses – like the Raiders potential lack of a long-kicking game – have less influence when teams are allowing fifty plus on each set because their middles are more fatigued. If the right edge is defensively sound or not may be irrelevant when attacks are all aimed north south trying to wear out tired middles.

Another advantage the Raiders have is in their coaching staff. In 2020 the Raiders felt surprised by the scale of the impact, and this was only more clear in 2021. The only major staff member from that era still at the club is Coach Stuart, and given he was on the committee that ostensibly pushed for these changes (and again, then rejected them once they were back in clubland), he should be ‘eyes up’ about what the changes might mean.

Part of the problem of 2020 and 2021 was that the Raiders continued to attack as if the world was what it once was. That seemed driven by a hope that what worked in 2019 would continue to. It didn’t. Hopefully that lesson has been learned. Without wanting to fawn over the coaching staff, Giteau, and other members like Brock Shepperd, seem better placed to adjust to what could be a rapidly changing world. Giteau’s philosophy of working to the circumstances of his talent rather than pre-conceptions about the game doesn’t just survive in uncertainty, it’s designed to thrive in it.

“It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are” – unknown, (attributions include Orson Welles, and Orson Scott Card).

Canberra already faced a challenge in building on 2025’s success in the upcoming season. But with the spectre of administration intervention hanging over the game, this could become even more difficult. Not only are they trying to win the race with the peloton gunning for them, but they don’t even know what lays on the road ahead.

What Canberra have built is not worthless though. Chaos isn’t the enemy, it’s the terrain. Their roster balance, their youth, and their capacity to adapt could allow them to keep their footing while the rest of the league scrambles for balance. If they can do that, they won’t be just surviving in 2026, but defining it.

The Sportress is transitioning away from Facebook and Twitter for distribution so sign up to the email below before we disappear from your feed altogether. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not.