BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders 26-0 embarassment at the hands of the Sydney Roosters was revealing.

For weeks we’ve been trying to get a handle on this team. Good weeks have been matched with bad. Forty or sixty minutes of competence paired with twenty minutes of buckled knees and lost lunch. It had drawn us up to this point with a question of whether the good or the bad was the truth of them. Presented with a chance to prove who they were, Canberra did. Maybe it’s time we started believing them.

Of course there are circumstantial reasons that influenced this outcome. The Raiders were on a short turnaround, and people like Hudson Young and Ethan Strange were on their third game in nine days. They lost a crucial player early in the game, hamstringing their yardage in a way that ate them inside-out throughout the game. They were going up against a star-studded line-up with something to prove.

But laying the blame at circumstances is what unserious football teams do. There were no excuses for this performance. They were beaten like the dust out of an old rug. In no facet of the game were they of standard. They dropped too much ball. Defended like they were afraid of tackling. Their middle couldn’t hold their opposition to anything but an easy rumble. The edges felt as safe as a house made of jam.

Their attack had no connection or strategy. It was either entirely tied to one-pass wide of the ruck or running on forty-five-degree angles across the field hoping for an opportunity to present themselves. One never did. It was a complete performance, just completely wrong. Working out where it started is like asking yourself where a circle starts. It’s all-encompassing.

The discipline was the most upsetting. The Roosters scored five tries. On four of them possession was given to them through an error. Canberra created chances early, and blew them as players panicked once they missed an opportunity. Kaeo Weekes threw the ball away after a break. Tommy Starling kicked for no one. Ethan Sanders saw a chance out wide and took a shortcut rather than the less-sexy route. It seemed they didn’t trust their attack. Maybe they had good reason.

But if the discipline was bad, the defence was even worse. Canberra never controlled the middle. The pack as currently comprised is too often incapable of competing in defence. Poor contact is part of it. Perhaps the rules are too. But whatever the root cause, the outcomes are the same. Too often the Raiders are defending a boulder rolling down a hill like Sisyphus stopped for smoko.

It puts so much pressure on the edges to make impossible tackles. Sometimes they did. Weekes had multiple try savers, bringing a speck of respectability akin to putting a fancy hat on reveller who’d just puked down their front. On multiple occasions Ethan Sanders brought down Siua Wong in effective try savers. But more often those moments proved beyond them.

And even then, the Raiders conspired to ensure the Roosters got the absolute value for their attack. On three of the tries scored a single defender made multiple errors on the same scoring play. On the Hugo Savala try, Xavier Savage missed both Billy Smith and Savala. On Mark Nawaqanitawase’s third, Matt Timoko got caught inside his man. When Jed Stuart jammed in, Timoko then missed on Marky Mark in a ‘must-make’ scenario. Morgan Smithies didn’t cover inside-out on Sam Walker, then when Ata Mariota saved his bacon, failed to get Reece Robson.

These defensive errors were not structural. People were where they needed to be. They had chances to make plays. They just didn’t. It was attention to detail. Canberra have had halves this year where they’ve forgotten how to play football. The second half against the Tigers comes to mind, and the Dolphins. The back end of the Warriors game. They can’t find a way to all do the right thing at the same time. There is always a frayed link in the chain.

In attack they seemed like a team caught between two ideas both with the same cause: they couldn’t get any foothold in the middle. Despite the big metres of many of the players (Tapine, Horsburgh, Young, Hosking, and Timoko all had over 100 metres on the ground) it never seemed to translate into consistent success through the middle of the park. So often they were kicking from their own half.

It’s hard not to think that the HIA of Savelio Tamale was instructive here. He and Matt Timoko are such a key one-two punch on the Raiders exit sets. Timoko got his metres (171 in total). But Jed Stuart and Xavier Savage were both unimpressive in yardage. It meant more donkey work for Hosking and Young who tried to cover the gap. But it always felt like it was an attempt to catch up, rather than dominate.

This lack of success in breaking down the ruck had several ramifications. In red zone sets they were unable to draw defenders to the middle. It meant that any attempt to shift was usually met with outside defenders jamming hard into the face of the ball players. Ethan Strange must have caught the ball running at the line once in the game. More often he was catching while a Roosters defender was ready to give him a neck rub, if he got the ball at all. It led to entire attacking forays where nothing seemed to happen, and they followed that up with a kicking game more speculative than targeted.

Further down the field they tried to play more expansively. Jayden Brailey was often catching it at first receiver and playing to a deep Sanders as the Raiders tried to find a way around the problem. Joey Tapine was a surprisingly effective link in shifting the ball to the outside backs. But even when space was found, the Raiders didn’t have the skills necessary to execute these opportunities, or the wisdom to know when the moment had passed. But more than that it felt like a shortcut, a spray-and-pray instead of trying to break down an opposition that was suffocating them.

And so it ended with not a bang, not even a whimper. Just confusion. What was this mess they had created, and where had last week gone? It’s an investigation they go through too often, a battle they fight more than they should, and until they find a way to control the noise in their heads and the mess of their hands, it’s one they’ll fight most weeks.

The Raiders can do things right. Sometimes they do, and for periods of time. But the challenge of succeeding like they did last year is doing the right thing all the time. The defeat of North Queensland was so noteworthy because it was the first time all year they kept doing the right thing all game. This loss was the opposite. They were wrong more than right. They were incapable of discipline, unable, unwilling, maybe scared, of trying and failing, so instead they hoped for shortcuts and home runs to do the work for them.

The talent is in this side, and the way to win, is known. With a bit of help in the way of personnel and focus they could give this competition a shake. But it doesn’t matter who’s wearing the jersey. Until they can trust their plan, and execute it, this is all just a lesson to help another season. Hopefully one day it pays off. Because in this game, this embarrassment, the Canberra Raiders showed exactly who they are, right now. And that side is not good.

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