BY DAN

No one ever has expectations of the Canberra Raiders.

Well, perhaps we should qualify that. No one outside of Canberra fans, club staff, and Ricky Stuart, has expectations. At least positive ones. Most of the rugby league commentariat take wherever the Raiders finished the year before, draw a downward trajectory and call it analysis.

When your last season ended in the minor premiership, that just means the arrow has to trend down with viciousness, at least according to popular belief. In a league where three or four teams usually cycle in and out of contention, the popular choices for regression are the Milk (and the Warriors). Huzzah for South Sydney. Boo that dastardly Canberrans.

This is driven by a couple of things, and it’s not just football field related. Partly Canberra is a victim of the circumstances of their rise. A surprising number of people had them coming last in 2025 – despite the fact the last time they won less than 10 games or finished below 10th was 2014, back when Obama was still president and Covid was just a pipe dream in a daddy bat’s imagination. Losing in the finals renders everything they achieved ‘unreal’, as though losing a qualifying final in unprecedented circumstances somehow proves the commentariat’s point. Canberra’s 2025 couldn’t be repeatable because no one believed it was doable in the first place. It’s a catch 22. You can’t be good unless you are already good.

This won’t have been altered by the Raiders performance against the Sharks in the trial game. We were not impressed, but it’s important to remember it’s just a trial. Canberra have recently shown a tendency to clock off when Coach Stuart removes the accountability from a game. They conceded 60 last year to the ‘Phins when Stick put in the baby Raiders. 48 in a game with even less gravitas is consistent with that.

It’s not something we recommend, but it’s hard to suggest it’s indicative of ongoing performance or anything approaching a form line. The Raiders were within three different bee’s appendages from playing a prelim the week after the Redcliffe debacle. Perhaps after round one we’ll have already forgotten the trail games, and the expectations of last year. One good game is all it takes for talking heads with the memory of Leonard Shelby to change their tunes.

Of course, it’s not just some mixture of form and expectation. Another contributing factor is that Canberra is the small market team. When paid media are trying to gin up engagement you want to hit the extremes with big markets. Picking the Eels to make a big leap is going to engender reaction from one of the biggest markets in the league and an interview on Triple M. Picking the Raiders to drop might get the Green Machine Podcast to talk about you for three minutes. With all love on earth to Mike and Matt and Lobby, these things are not the same.

Picking the minor premiers to not be the minor premiers again is also a good opportunity to prove you know ball. Not because you do, but because it’s a low-risk bet. Before last season it had been a decade since someone other than the Riff, Roosters and Storm had ended the regular season at the top of the table, so playing the odds suggests it won’t happen again.

Odds aside commentators love to point to the one major change to the roster, the absence of Jamal Fogarty. A smarter man than me – the ABC’s and ESPN’s NRL Boom Rookies, and massive Raiders’ fan Nick Campton – has said this pre-season that Canberra fans tend to understate how important Fogarty was to their success, while foreign interlopers go the opposite and overstate his importance.

There’s no question of Fogarty’s importance to the club over his four-year time there. Campton is fond of noting that the club won sixty per cent of the games Jamal played for them, and while I’ve not checked the numbers, it notably vibed even when Jack Wighton was missing. Acting as the fulcrum of the attack suited Fogarty, and Canberra thrived.

But I wonder if this always came with a trade off. It built in a weakness in defence due to Fogarty’s decision making and lateral agility, and limitation in the right side attack because Fogarty wasn’t a realistic threat to the line. Undoubtedly they will miss Fogarty’s marshalling, and his field-flipping kicking game, and it may temporarily lower their ‘floor’. But they may also remove a target in their defence line.

Just as likely is that it provides an opportunity for evolution. With all the talent they have at other key positions, that is just starting to touch the edges of its potential, there’s every chance the Milk take another leap. At other times Canberra’s attack has been reliant on a major contributor (Todd Carney, Josh Hodgson, Jack Wighton, maybe Ivan Henjak or Chris O’Sullivan? – old heads let me know, I’m trading on the vibes of a six-year-old), only to either continue, or thrive, post their departure. It’s not a sign the original was not good, just that success comes in many forms.

But that kind of historical or football discussion isn’t really suited to pre-season predictions. Gin up the engagement, make it bold and better, and most of all, meld the Milk to suit the circumstances around the game rather than on it. That’s the game here, and that’s why the Raiders are fighting the narrative.

That will suit them just fine. It’s weird that a minor premier who went out in straight sets can face such middling expectations. Normally talking heads would be saying “so and so has to get them beyond week one of the finals because.,.” Hot seats would be mentioned. Now they’ll be saying it’s a good news story if the Raiders even make it.

Coach Stuart has made an artform of sticking it to Sydney (pun slightly intended), so he’ll appreciate the billboard material. Joey Taps has been perennially underrated…somehow…so he’ll approach it as business as usual. A host of other players, forgotten by other clubs, the media, and the rugby league community alike will continue to work in obscurity. In the end what other people think won’t make a difference. The only measurement is on the field.

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