The Canberra Raiders are trying to bring Josiah Pahulu to town. Again.
Per the Daily Telegraph (with a hat tip to the ever-handsome folk over at the Greenhouse), the Raiders are interested in bringing fringe Storm prop Pahulu to the club to fill their desperate hole in first-grade quality middle forwards.
This is the second time they tried this trick. The last came just before the 2025 season, when Pahulu sought to get out from his contract with the Titans. He was then coming off a season in which he’d played 19 first grade games, and was evidently unsure about getting consistent minutes at a club that had put all their resources into Tino Fa’asuamaleaui and Moeaki Fotuaika.
That battle ended with him choosing the Storm, transitioning to them for the 2026 season. Only he faced the same conundrum there, getting only one game in first grade (17 minutes off the bench) in a Storm side that was as bereft of capable middles as the Raiders currently are. Instead he spent most of the season playing NSW Cup, reeling off big minutes and *fine* metres. It’s fair to say he didn’t exactly kick the door down at Melbourne.
Given they were without any healthy or good middles this isn’t exactly confidence building. There are a lot of reasons a 22-year-old doesn’t crack a Melbourne line up. Craig Bellamy gives middles a clear task, and sometimes (like Sticky) can get caught up on playing people he trusts over people with talent. The foibles of youth are rarely tolerated by Bellyache. Perhaps it’s as innocent as that, but it’s certainly a concern.
But that’s what happens when you’re scouring other teams’ depth charts. You’ve got to take some punts. We’ve been here before when the Raiders turned Simi Sasagi into a first grader. Sometimes you got to take a punt that you’re the one that can change him. This isn’t a stab in the dark though. The Raiders have clearly had their eyes on him for some time.
He certainly would meet a need – he’s capable of playing first grade as a prop. He can run hard and break tackles – he had three or more tackle breaks in 44 per cent of his Cup games last year. He’ll make his tackles. But he’s not an offloader (at least, he doesn’t have his offload-license). In the times I’ve watched him, I’ve never thought of him as agile (say, like Ata Mariota).
This single-track focus shouldn’t be much of an issue for the Milk. Over the last six months their stack of props and middle forwards has flipped from being big to bouncy. We wrote of this transition earlier in the week. They’ve added Hopoi to this list as another more agile unit, and also Jaiyden Hunt. If they keep Hudson (hello to an ‘If’ the size of my…ego), they’ll have so many backrowers to cover the middle rotation that the balance offered by a ‘tuck it under their arm and bash some heads’ prop would be welcome.
So even if he’s more beef than balance, Pahulu fills a need and isn’t a bad upside bet. The club clearly sees the talent, and there’s enough pedigree (u/19s State of Origin, playing regular first grade at 20) to suggest there is more that he can offer if given a push in the right direction. Stick would be backing himself to do that, if he was acquired. And more often than not, he’s right.
He’d likely also come cheap, if Canberra’s slow-play bet pays off. According to the report the deal landing depends on how much of his 2027 contract the Storm will eat. I wonder if that’s a bit of gamesmanship by the Milk. The Storm and the Raiders both know that Canberra want him, nay, need him. The play here is presumably to act a bit hard to get, so the Storm are more willing to let him out of his 2027 deal. But given who the Storm let go (Curtis, I hope you are somewhere atoning), the games can work two ways.
It’s worth watching. If the Raiders were to get Pahulu I would be relieved more than excited. That’s a first-grade quality middle, with more upside than other acquisitions hunted this offseason (see what I did there?). He wouldn’t be a starter, but he could be part of the bench rotation in round one and I wouldn’t panic.
That’s the takeaway. The Raiders need middles. Along with Luron Patea (as all terminally online Milkpeople will note), Pahulu is one of the highest-upside of acquisitions realistically available. If Canberra could get him, it wouldn’t be the end of their search, but it would be one step towards fixing a problem they created last season.
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