For much of her Canberra career Sophie Holyman has been the ‘and’.
Simaima Taufa and Sophie Holyman. Zahara Temara and Sophie Holyman. Even Grace Kemp and Holyman.
I’ve no doubt it’s been different in the four walls of Raiders HQ. When you’re building a side from scratch, players with her pedigree, with her professionalism, with her consistency can’t just be and.
I bet every player in that house have learned from her in some way. Her quiet consistency. Her continuous efforts. Her agility and quick feet in the line, turning the most difficult run into a quick ruck and metres for someone else. She is an elite forward in the NRLW. But rarely does she get the plaudits.
From the outside it’s seemed like an odd position for a representative forward. She’s been the nice to have, the player that we sometimes talk about, but rarely the focus of the media or the broader commentariat.
This season though she’s forced a different conversation. Her performance has forced her to be the centre of conversations about the Milk. A career high in metres (120m per game, sixth amongst middles in the comp), hasn’t just been a statistical quirk; she been obviously dominant through the middle of the park. This has been such a notable increase (15 metres per game up on last season), and a huge part of why the Raiders have succeeded.
Normally when a player, particularly a prop, increases their output in one facet it comes at the expense of other areas of the game. But Holyman’s impressive motor, and willingness to do the dirty work hasn’t disappeared. Holyman is still elite in so many of the ‘effort’ facets of the game. She’s first in decoy runs and fifth in support runs. That Holyman is maintaining that extra effort, alongside increasing her output, is impressive.
And even that understates her importance. Holyman is top 20 in tackles in the league. But more importantly, she’s one of the most impactful defenders in the league. According to the Rugby League Eye Test, whose analysis shows that Holyman concedes among the fewest metres per missed tackle, indicating that even when she doesn’t get clean contact, players stay hit.
This has only been more important since Simaima Taufa’s suspension. Taufa, like Holyman, is a mix of star and workhorse, able to crank out metres while still being the quintessential clean up artist (with 9.8 support runs per game, she averages a full extra support run that number two in the competition). With Taufa out, more has fallen on Holyman to be the mix of star and sherpa, and in the two games that have followed she hasn’t let her side down.
Holyman says she just wants to do her part for the team:
Our motivation in the middle right now is that we don’t have our Mimes, our captain, with us…We want to make her proud. We have both [her and Saunders] learned so much from her – run hard, tackle hard and don’t stop working.
The game is getting quicker so we’ve worked on our fitness because we know our job is to go forward
We just want to do our part for the team.
Holyman has upped her output, maintained her effort areas, and been one of the best defensive middles in the league. She’s been a critical part of the Raiders competing with the best, and making their first finals. Someone who was once the, extra, the accessary, the power behind the throne, is now just the power. And she’s been doing it without Simaima Taufa.
Maybe that’s the important ‘and’ this season.
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