Raiders Review: Job Done

We don’t often get days like this.

The Canberra Raiders had a simple task this weekend. Beat a team that has all but given up. Don’t make it hard. Rack up some cheap points to rectify their differential. Hopefully stay healthy. 56 points later and zero additional injuries later, and it seems they achieved all those things.

One might say that it was a plan coming together, fully implemented and exploited, but it’s been so long since the Raiders were so thorough and committed in their work that I’m not sure I’m qualified to identify it. The Tigers were the opposite, and the resulting scoreline was an accurate reflection of the tenor of the game. They didn’t want to be apathetic, but when you’ve spent so much time pretending eventually the cold hands of reality grab your throat.

Most blowouts are borne from absolute dominance in the middle of the park. This game was no different. If the Tigers are currently more feces that football, the Raiders pack kicked the shit out of them. Canberra outgained their opposition by 600 metres across the game, waltzing up and down the park directness through the ruck.

When they’ve stuck to this plan recently, they’ve had success. It seems obvious, but it was good to see them stick to it, even when the Tigers were more facilitative. With Tom Starling at nine it felt like a reversion to type, forwards staying tight to the ruck, making the heart-sapped Tigers prove they actually wanted the fight. They equivocated.

Joe Tapine led the charge (17 for 182m, 75 post contact) but for once he wasn’t playing a lone hand. Outside his infuriating kick penalty that led to the first Tigers’ try, Corey Horsburgh had his best game of the season, with a stat-stuffing 145m, 40 tackles and a try assist.

Ata Mariota (17 for 160m) was effective playing on an edge and attacking the inside shoulder of the backrower. On another day his arm, which routinely got free, would have found a supporting player for a try. Simi Sasagi (16 for 214m) continued to do a BJ Leilua impression, taking heavy hit-ups as a third forward.

Canberra came like Maxwell’s Silver Hammer on the Tigers’ head, and the destruction was complete. For a brief period after Joe Tapine first went off the momentum felt more balanced, but the Raiders didn’t panic. After battling off a few counterblows, they re-established their complete control.

How complete? Well you could go with your eyes, or the numbers above. Or you could note that Daine Laurie scored three tries, all coming from him attacking possibly dead, or dying, defenders through the middle of the field. Or the fact that the Raiders had Laurie, and Starling, and then Starling and Jayden Brailey on the park for the entire second stanza, and the Tigers barely got into the attacking half.

Stick has been talking about laying platforms recently, and how the job of halves is easier when the pack is doing their job. One begat the other in this game, and Ethan Sanders had yet another stunning game. His four try assists all came in different ways, building off each other and demonstrating the evolving maturity and improvement of his game.

A month ago these pages (and most Raiders social media) were complaining about his kicking game. For the second week in a row his long kicking game kept flipping the field. His short kicking game resulted in a perfectly weighted bomb for Jed Stuart’s first try.

Earlier this season we saw a player who lacked confidence in attack. Today he twice made line breaks taking on the line, once backing himself against the fullback, and on the other rightly choosing to find the support.

Then two other try assists came from terrorising the defensive winger. When the winger jumped in on Timoko he floated the ball to Jed Stuart. When the winger stayed out he let Matty T take Patrick Herbert one-on-one. Despite Herbert’s game-long piss and vinegar routine, only one player was going to win that battle.

There were times this season that the vision of Sanders as the leader of this attack felt shakier. But as this season wear on the more it seems he’s ready to lead this team, proving more adept, more consistent, and more cunning each week.

It’s pleasing to see how efficiently the offence works when he’s at the fulcrum. Ethan Strange is freed to run and create. In this game he scored one try because he’s a brute and refuses to accede to polite society’s requests to be tackled. On another opportunity he put Matty Timoko outside his defender, but he couldn’t execute the pass to an open Stuart. Kaeo Weekes is open to attack on the edges, and had one try taken off him that displayed his continued effectiveness attacking the right edge (and scored another run-away. It’s bliss to watch). And Sasagi and Timoko are proving to be the kinds of weapons that Sanders and Strange can utilise. If only they could find consistency in their backrower combinations. Not this season I guess.

If there was an irritation it was that the defence looked less consistent. A team that had all but given up created too many opportunities for comfort. One try came from Morgan Smithies absolute failure of his role early in the game on the back of Horse’s penalty. Another try came when the Raiders had the numbers to make the play, but Jed Stuart did the exact opposite of what his centre was doing, and created an overlap himself. Those kinds of misgivings will be exploited by better teams. These are the kind of lapses that show the gameplan is only ever that.

In the end it seemed easy, because it was. And that’s the rub about this game. Canberra came up against a talented team playing like reserve graders. There seems no rhyme or reason for that from the outside, but whatever is felling them from the inside is pervasive. The Raiders showed no trickery or luck in what they did. They just worked hard and took the metres on offer. But did the Tigers have to offer so many?

That’s what makes it hard to draw a trendline from this. This wasn’t a proper test. It may as well be open book. Canberra did their job and looked good doing it, but stiffer trials await (hello Penrith!). That they’ll be facing them without Noah Martin or Hudson Young only underscores the importance of getting this victory now.

Canberra are still in the running for the finals, and officially can’t win the wooden-spoon. After how this season has felt it’s worth celebrating both feats. Without their starting backrow, or their hooker, and with the wounded felines coming to town, no Raiders fan was comfortable.

But for once the Milk did what they were meant to. I’ll pour a glass of celebration whisky and blast some Dan Sultan tonight. Don’t let these days pass you by without gratitude. The Canberra Raiders are a mystical and mythical being, one that rarely appears in the form that one would expect. But hey, occasionally the die is cast and a football team emerges. Job done. How good would it be if it kept going?

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