BY DAN

I’m proud of you.

You keep turning up. Week after week. In the vain hope that this ship, gurgling its way to the bottom of Lake Burley Griffin, will remain afloat.

Maybe this is the week it all turns around? Yeah I think we’ve all said that, in print, to our loved ones, to the mirror. The end of the week comes and instead of wondering about enjoying our life, the cold sweats, bargaining, and anxiety return. Football. Raiders. Urgh.

This week feels a little bit lighter, if only because a host of familiar faces are back. Papa has walked in the door, bringing with him a quiet assuredness and a know-how that has been sorely lacking in recent weeks. Sometimes you need to learn, or at least remember, how to win. This team has felt the depths of the fall this year, and maybe the big guy can bring some stability, and some confidence, to a side lacking it.

He’s joined in the 17 by Noah Martin. It’s a sign of how highly the club rates Martin, and trusts his physical situation, that he’s in a presumably 80 minute role on the right-edge, despite not seeing the field in months. That allows the club to shift Zac Hosking to 13, adding pace and agility in the middle, and better defensive cover for Owen Pattie.

This makeup is future focused. In a perfect world this spine will be the Raiders’ when they win the premiership in 2027 and beyond. Pattie is more artistic than Sanders. Strange is more destructive than either. Weekes is the Ferrari, and Sanders, when fully-formed, the cool-eyed captain. If the pack plays to their potential. If the backs are given some space to operate and an urgency to match. If if if. Someone call Gino D’Acampo.

The opposition have quietly been picking up the pieces of a season that had cratered as bad as the Raiders. They got to work earlier, and have won four of their last five games. That’s coincided with the reduction of the use of the set restart, clocked by the Rugby League Eye Test as starting around round 13. It’s allowed the return of their defensive prowess, and they’ve beaten the Storm and Manly during that run, so it’s not fool’s gold.

The Dogs are a curious beast. They barely rest a week before Cam Ciraldo wants to change the spine in some way. Last year it was interrupting a winning side to move on their creative hooker and sack their performing half. Now they took their long-term six Matt Burton, moved him to centre, moved their long-term centre, Stephen Crichton to six.

They put 30 on the Titans last week with this makeup, and 13 on Manly the week before. Before that they’d looked most effective when Burton was running the ball through the middle third. I don’t know what to tell you. But they’ve been winning, and the Raiders haven’t, so I think it’s fair to say who the heck are we to judge?

Winning this game is possible. The Dogs are improved but even at their best they’re hardly dynamic. They’ve gone from awful to mediocre this year. The Raiders might be covered in their own faeces right now, but it still feels possible that they have an upside, that if accessed, is higher.

It starts with a defensive improvement, inside out. They cannot offer easy metres to a side that doesn’t come by them as easily as Canberra. They cannot give them the space to work over the Raiders’ edges, no matter how pleasing it is to see returning players there like Martin, and Simi Sasagi. And they can’t afford to turnover cheap possession, through dropping bombs, runs, or giving away penalties. That’s easy to say than do, as this season has shown.

It also requires better redzone attack; something that gets easier when you have weapons to deploy, and when you orient your attack towards the goal line rather than tiptoe tentatively on forty-five-degree angles. And it requires better kicking, particularly in short kicks close to the line. And then maybe we’re talking about victory come Saturday night.

Or maybe we’re back where we are right now, wondering where it all went wrong, making bargains with ourselves, looking in the mirror and wondering if maybe we should really get into trains instead of this mess.

The Sportress is transitioning away from Facebook and Twitter for distribution so sign up to the email below and I will listen to three (3) wishes of yours. Don’t hesitate to send us feedback (dan@sportress.org) or comment below if you think we are stupid. Or if we’re not.