BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders’ 36-34 victory over the South Sydney Rabbitohs was a loss in spirit but a victory on the scoreboard. Instead of vanquishing their demons, the Raiders embraced them, turning what should have been an easy victory in a confused display of madness. The good things stayed good, and the bad things still have them limping home from Perth. Victory gives them time, but that is all.

The Canberra that came into this game is the same that left. I guess it’s better that it didn’t get worse. The last month of footy, shit the whole year, has been a haphazard mess of frustration and sadness interspersed with the occasional marvel. This game was no different. A game like this contained so many extremes that Eric Hobsbawn could write a book on it.

Let’s start with the good things. Canberra thrived when they played direct. Early in the game they made metres targeting defenders around the ruck that couldn’t match their power, nor their pace. Simi Sasagi, a centre, had so many good runs early in sets that it almost overshadowed his weaponry in late-set shifts. Sav Tamale was good when he wasn’t dropping the ball or bombs, or trying to force contact rather than just take the belly and the quick ruck.

Joey Tapine started hot (90 first half metres) too, getting more late-set runs than he’d be used to. That’s the game at the moment, until Pete decides otherwise. Ata Mariota looked excellent as a starting middle; he’s agile enough to take advantage of a destructed ruck, and strong enough to create the mess himself. Jed Stuart and Morgan Smithies are the only players in the 19 consistently willing to just get to their belly rather than try to break the game open.

Anytime they could play direct and win a ruck, Ethan Strange came into the game. He was a terror without the help of a cratered ruck. With it he is chaos incarnate. All it takes is three steps towards the A defender, a skip away, and he and Simi Sasagi weaponised competence. A shimmy and pass started the third and sixth tries. A simple recognition of Cody Walker at centre not being a speck of dust on Sasagi’s nightstand (no I don’t know what that means either) was their fourth.

It’s not the first week it’s been threatening. It won’t be the last. A try, 109 of the most impactful metres on the ground, five tackle breaks, two line breaks were at Ethan’s hand. Simi got credit for two try-assists, 228 metres, and 8 tackle busts. Strange, either allowing or creating space for Sasagi to cook, is Canberra’s best, and most repeatable weapon right now.

Canberra created other tries. Tom Starling utilised weight of possession and a connection fostered over the best part of a decade with Hudson Young to score their first. Sav Tamale picked up a loose pass to score the second, revealing good pace and his ongoing confidence issues when he nearly decided to not score. And Kaeo Weekes.

Fuck me Kaeo (an exclamation, not a direction, though when you scored to make it 30-22 I may have said different). That was video game bullshit. I was more impressed by the people he didn’t run through (sup, Russillo). There was barely a player that he didn’t embarrass on that 95 plus metres (vertical, probably 130 in all) to the goal line. It wasn’t just astounding, but critical, given the morass the Raiders were in at that time. They don’t win without it, which is both a compliment and damning.

But despite all these good things, there was so much worry in this game. Errors abounded, at the most infuriating times. The lack of confidence that Tamale has under the high ball is invading the rest of his game. He dropped two kicks in this game, and three balls on exit sets. Three tries directly followed his errors.

Questions will be asked this week about his position in the team. He’s an excellent player when he’s not in his head. My only request is that whatever decision is made is with getting his mind right at the forefront.

He wasn’t the only one doing infuriating things. After the Raiders scored their first try, both he and Zac Hosking, starting on the right edge in place of Noah Martin, found easy errors that pointed to a lack of attention to detail and ended their period of dominance. Weekes dropped a floating bomb that he should have handled. Hudson Young dropped the ball, and so did Martin.

This was only exacerbated by Ethan Sanders patchy kicking game; he did force a repeat, but his bombs continuously come up short, and put pressure on the defence – almost worth an error. He’s doing an admirable job managing the sets in attack but Owen Pattie’s kicking, both long and short, would be welcome, reducing the pressure on a young man trying to navigate first grade.

12 errors and poor kicking will normally lose you a game, but when both teams have that many, someone has to win. Through the first half, and for much of the second, the Raiders were completing at sixty percent. It only didn’t impact them initially because Souths were too.

When the opposition cleaned up their handling to start the second half, the pressure was on. Ruck control, which had been clear in attack and confident enough in defence, fell apart. Direct lines were made for Canberra’s line, and there was little resistance.

The weight of possession, and the discipline with which the Bunnies used it to start the second half, put pressure on them in a range of ways. The middle couldn’t hack the grind, or didn’t want to, perhaps expecting the game to go the way it did at the back of the first stanza. The edges were putting under a heap of pressure. The defence was on tilt, scrambling, exhausted, and as the game wore on, unable to stop two passes to an edge turning into a line break.

Having said that, I wouldn’t put the blame on the halves. Ethans Sanders and Strange were both impressive in defence, the latter handling David Fifita for much of the second half when hunted by the former Titan. Tries came around Strange, but I’m not convinced because of him. Indeed at other points Young trusted him to shift onto the ball, and into the middle to make tackles, while Huddo shifted out to cover oncoming shifts from an advantageous position. You don’t get that flexibility with most halves.

Instead Seb Kris and Simi Sasagi both did things in defence I didn’t understand, primarily panicking into running past the play. Three different people played right backrower, such was the porous defence in that space. Perhaps the problem was never Matt Timoko. More likely, poor decision making exacerbated by inexperience and a lack of inside-out pressure from an exhausted middle.

By the end the Rabbitohs felt inevitable. Canberra were better for the majority of the game, but when they were worse it was a disaster. This is not a way to win games going forward. These problems are fixable, either through personnel change, improved attention to detail and a bit of patience. But zero improvements were made in this game. Just more frustration, and a victory so putrid the stench offended nostrils from 4000 kilometres away.

Can you hate a victory? Feel angry, sad, and relieved at the same time? Mutter about every matter, grumble at the very mention of the sport, and still somehow be glad that the noises in your head, self-generating and put there by others, will be softer, and more generous for another week? This game was that reality, a temper trap between heaven and hell that would impress Theseus.

Every single weakness they came into the game reared its ugly head. High kicks. Poor handling. Inability to control the ruck in defence. They got so out of position so often on defence that the Bunnies were basically making breaks for fun by the end. Twice they had what should have been match-winning leads. Twice they gave them up in less than 10 minutes. These things are not sustainable.

But the victory means they have another week of breathing space to work out how to do it. Call it necessary. Call it ugly. Disgusting. Infuriating. Should I stop? Canberra needed that win, and got it by doing a lot of right things, and then a host of fucking embarrassing things. When Simi Sasagi was screaming to the crowd in celebration of the game result I was infuriated – how could one celebrate that slop? It’s the equivalent of celebrating a puppy for shitting in the kitchen, because at least it has tiles.

But the journey of a thousand victories starts with one, and despite reports to the contrary, winning remains better than losing. It doesn’t mean they’re back, but at least they’re not gone. There’s life in this season, air in its lungs. A pulse, quiet, not thriving, has been discovered. It will take some work to get all this back walking. But this was the first step.

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