BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders’ 29–28 victory over Manly shouldn’t have been so close. In a game they dominated for sixty minutes, the twenty they didn’t fell into a madness that only fate could control. Everything went right, until it went wrong, and the wounds of years past emerged, covered in pus. Canberra wiped them off, stiffened, and took what was rightly theirs. It’s not enough to build a season on, but it sure as hell beats the alternative.

People will tell you it was lucky. But mama fortune didn’t smile at the Raiders in this game. Everything they won was taken through graft, through ferocity, through an effort built in the months of November, December and January. Nothing went right until it did, and that only proved temporary. When the pain of years past reared its ugly head, the Raiders hardened their resolve and overcame the obstacle. It’s not perfect, but in March it doesn’t need to be.

It’s impossible to talk about this game without acknowledging the disadvantage built in the first fifteen minutes. Canberra didn’t touch the ball before being down 8–0 after 12 minutes, and only really got their hands on it once before a second try came to put them down 14. Please dwell on that. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before. Penalty and infringement built on each other, a pressure that eventually caused the line to break through weight of possession more than anything. That Canberra came out of the chaos with only a split lip and a fourteen‑point deficit was a minor miracle. It was such a stark contrast to this time last year, when a similar weight of possession ended in a Corey Horsburgh sin‑bin and fifteen minutes of hell in the same game.

This is the nature of the game at the moment. The extension of the set‑restart rule to cover 80 per cent of the field wreaks chaos on the football played between those markers, allowing teams to hold the ball for ages and acres while viewers hope something can change. Canberra gave away three penalties and four set restarts in the mess, and the Sea Eagles got to attack unencumbered.

It felt helpless. One try came from a missed catch and the chaos following. Another came from Ethan Strange trying to defend both the lead runner and the out‑the‑back man. It wasn’t so much a fault of the side as a situation posed too many times for anyone to continually resolve in the same way.

But while Canberra were in a deficit, it wasn’t evidence that everything was wrong. Their edges were holding fast, save for the one error, in the face of an attack whipping the ball side‑to‑side. Ethan Sanders looked safe in defence, routinely getting in the face and line of line‑running psychopaths like Haumole Olakau’atu. The middle was robust, supplemented by playing Morgan Smithies alongside Corey Horsburgh from the twentieth minute, recognition that the Raiders needed to find a way to hold the middle early. They remained effervescent, continually swallowing up attacking movements. They were doing their best. They just needed the fucking ball.

It was draining, but they eventually got a hold of the rock and the game turned. Even then they didn’t do anything exciting. It was a clear game plan: play fast and direct. The ball barely got outside the first receiver in the first half. Any width was direct to back‑rowers or outside backs running ‘unders’ lines, coming back against the grain. Canberra wasn’t playing past the edges. They were trying to exhaust the middle defenders, playing tight and direct around the ruck and the A defenders. An offload was the only variation required.

This was pure Vlandoball and Canberra proved they have adjusted. Throughout the latter first half, and through their explicitly dominant period in the second half, they were relentless. Power and pace through the middle. The ball barely got outside the first receiver. Instead of Canberra’s middle driving the game, the back five, Hudson Young and Tom Starling took control, playing fast and tight, winning rucks and making metres. Weekes, Savage, Tamale, Sasagi, Young and Starling were playing simple footy and reaping the rewards in the form of yardage.

Canberra rarely got width to attack early. Noah Martin scored once, almost as an afterthought — a face ball that became points because he’s a menace. Then in the second half, as they wore the Manly defensive resolve to a nub, they played more expansively down the right‑hand side. Martin scored again, the right man at the right time when Kaeo Weekes tested the line. Xavier Savage scored twice: once from Ethan Strange digging into the line and connecting with Simi Sasagi’s perfect hands, another on the back of a perfect kick by Hudson Young chasing a Weekes line break. The scoring ended with Ethan Sanders choosing the right moment to run the ball on a shift.

It wasn’t perfect. Their red‑zone attack was stilted. They looked most comfortable pouring through the middle like Huns at the gate of Rome. In close quarters they were still looking for fluidity, or anything more structured than getting the ball to Martin or Strange and giving them the space to ruin people’s careers. Against better sides they will need more, but in this game they created what was needed.

And in defence they remained ferocious. Between the 15th and 75th minute Manly didn’t look like scoring. The Raiders’ voracious defence kept eating their east‑west approach like it was a Sausage McMuffin and they had a hangover. Edge defenders were tested, and even when they seemed vulnerable, cover was coming at pace. This was notable. The Milk were not perfect, but they certainly were fast. Brutality was matched with a pervasive pace that ensured the impact of any imperfect contact was minimal.

So it was a surprise when it all fell to shit. Canberra had constructed a hard‑fought 14‑point lead with seven to go, and it evaporated quicker than you could say Bathurst. The first try came on the back of a chaos pass and kick that somehow ended in the hands of Jason Saab while also removing two Raiders defenders from the line by way of cramp. Xavier Savage again found himself behind the play after trying to jump the route rather than maintain his discipline. A second followed when Ethan Strange missed on Tolutau Koula, and the six other defenders with chances to shut the movement down failed to do so.

It was everything going wrong, all at once, much like the first fifteen minutes of the game. But Canberra seemed to have survived when Jamal Fogarty’s two‑point field goal fell short. But that fucking music played again, and the only team to concede penalties after the siren were at it again. Fogarty hit the penalty and every sick thought in our collective heads was becoming real.

But then Ethan Sanders got into field‑goal position and calmly slotted his first attempt. It was surprising in the moment – that it felt like he had heaps of time. That he seemed so calm. That it sailed towards the posts as if it was practice and a game wasn’t on the line. Canberra felt so incapable of finding a field goal at any critical moment last year, or at any point under the regime of the previous halfback, it seemed so stark that the new one treated it so matter‑of‑fact.

In a game where when things went wrong, they went catastrophic, and Canberra still looked superior. They weathered the early storm, launched into a counter‑attack, and while they never found fluidity, they found enough points and the chance to run away with it. When things again turned, they did enough to hold on. Their opposition was able to walk a tightrope back into the game. On another day they won’t be able to. On another day the Milk will keep their foot on the throat. Hopefully.

And so we turn to what is sustainable. That will be determined by which Canberra turns up going forward: the ill‑disciplined mess of the first fifteen and last five, or the ferocious menace of the middle sixty. Canberra can be a force in this league if they can find a way to extend their best beyond sixty minutes. They will be also‑rans if they keep allowing oppositions such head starts or free runs to the finish line.

This wasn’t the proof many would be looking for that they are contenders. But it is proof that they’ve been learning the lessons of the past, both from 2025 and previous. And maybe that’s all round one is meant to be. Not a declaration that they are the big bad of the league. Not proof in one week that a whole year wasn’t a fluke. Not a coronation — just a reminder that this team is growing, hurting, and still learning how to win games they used to lose.

The Raiders didn’t show us their ceiling tonight. Instead they showed that their floor is high and their spine is strong. And in the first week of March, that’s enough to make the road ahead feel possible.

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