BY DAN

Hello, and welcome to the Sportress, possibly the worst named sports blog in world history.

This blog was originally the home to four friends thinking that the world needed more white dudes’ takes on sport. We looked at a crowded market and thought “we’re all individuals”.

What happened wasn’t so much a failure, just not the success that we hoped. I’m not sure what we imagined, but it certainly involved glamour and status not associated with a blog.

The first time anyone really noticed what we were doing was when we wrote about Terry Campese. If you got here and you don’t know who he is then I don’t know what to tell you; you’re a modern miracle. Suddenly people (as in like 100) had read our stuff. It was exciting to think people cared what we thought.

We hadn’t set out to be a ‘Raiders’ blog but our love and enthusiasm for them overwhelmed everything else we wrote. And so while contributors dropped off, Rob and I kept punching out Reviews and Rumbles each week, engaging with the wonder of NRL twitter and generally enjoying ourselves.

We were really keen to provide something that either the Canberra Times, or other mainstream outlets weren’t able (or weren’t interested) in providing. In-depth tactical and strategic outline of how the Raiders were going. Proper context and the raw emotion that comes from being immersed in something your literal whole life. For the papers a game review is to tell you what the facts are. For us, we assume you watched it too, so rather than tell you what happened, we want to tell you why, and what it means. In their mid-week pieces papers will tell you what the players are thinking; I’ve never been that massive on that. I’d rather tell you what I think they’re leaving out.

We like to think we provide you some high quality analysis, and sometimes we’re right. We genuinely love every time people tell us positive or constructive feedback.

What we’ve found is a community of people that are willing to engage intelligently with rugby league. It’s a blessing, and every single one of you that read our stuff are appreciated.