I honestly don’t know what the NRLW Raiders were expecting when they ran out against the Eels on Sunday. Whatever it was, they weren’t ready for it.
The Eels opened with relentless energy through the middle and for the first 35 minutes almost never let up. Boss Kapua (dope name) racked up a barnstorming 139m from 16 carries – the Raiders best forward was Preston with 120m/10c.
Weirdly the Raiders won almost every positive metric in the team stats – it was the intangibles of desire and enthusiasm where the Eels outshone them.
If you were asked to watch this game without prior knowledge of the season and then pick which team was headed to the finals you’d back Parramatta. Yes, they made almost as many errors as the Raiders (10-8) and conceded the same amount of penalties (7-7) but they also had less possession and yardage to get the job done.
Canberra’s deficiencies were laid bare in the dying minutes of the game, a sort of micro-sudden death bundled into the last few minutes of regular time.
Twice the Raiders tried to exit their half and set up for a field goal, and twice they dropped it just as they reached the halfway line. The second error was all the encouragement that Parramatta needed, and they duly potted the winning field goal in the final seconds.
This game was supposed to be the winnable one, sandwiched between the Titans and the Tigers. While Canberra are still pretty much a lock for their first finals series they desperately need to right the longboat against Wests.
They’d better row like hell.
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