What a long and agonising season this has been for Raiders fans.
Time and again in 2015 the Canberra Raiders found a way to lose a close game. Seven times the Raiders found themselves on the wrong end of a game decided by less than a try – including the Bulldogs game which was technically seven points but only after a last second try from Moses Mbye after a botched Raiders short kick off.
Overall their record in games decided by less than a try was one win and seven losses. They also had a pair of twelve-point losses to the Warriors and Broncos that were closer than the final score indicated.
In the words of Maxwell Smart, they missed it by that much.
To be clear though it wasn’t simply a comical series of misfortunes a la Get Smart that cost the Raiders their season. The team deserved to lose pretty much every one of those close games as they made a veritable art form of dropping balls, throwing offloads to no one and giving away truly idiotic penalties.
The team’s wastefulness was all the worse having come in a year in which they got breakout seasons from much ballyhooed club juniors like Shannon Boyd, Paul Vaughan and Jack Wighton, while incorporating a pair of first-rate Super League imports in Josh Hodgson and the halfback assassin Sia Soliola
And then there was Blake Austin who went from handy utility at the Tigers to unfathomable Origin snub in a matter of six months in Canberra and electrified games up and down the length of the season to be universally acclaimed as the best new recruit in the league in 2015.
In the end though the team’s profligacy came back to haunt them as they exit the competition earlier than they should have and face yet another offseason of lamenting what could have been.
Season highlight
After a typical lacklustre start to the season yielding only an opening-weekend win from the first four rounds, the Raiders leapt to action with a remarkable four wins in five games between Rounds 5 and 9. The streak included exhilarating come from behind wins over the Wests Tigers and Rabbitohs and was topped off with a colossal 56-16 win at home against the woeful Titans.
In particular though the victory over the defending premiers which came in a rare free-to-air game that the Rabbitohs had moved to Cairns, gave coach Ricky Stuart the opportunity to take a few shots at a variety of targets for a perceived lack of respect shown to the club.
Season lowlight
All of the close losses were awful – take it from someone who was at most of them – but a special mention goes to the loss to the Tigers on an icy cold Canberra evening in Round 22.
With their season on the line the Raiders should have come out strongly against a bottom-of-the-table team, even one that was coming off an impressive win over the Storm. Instead the team played lifeless, error-ridden football as they gifted the Tigers a meaningless victory.
That the team was then formally eliminated the following week against the Sea Eagles via a try that should have been disallowed only added a miserable coda to the Raiders season.
Best player: Josh Hodgson
As brilliant as Blake Austin was for the Raiders the most valuable player was English hooker Josh Hodgson. While Kurt Baptiste, the “funny little bloke with the beard” as Matthew Johns referred to him was a steady option off the bench, the difference in the Raiders’ play with Hodgson off the field was palpable.
Not since Simon Woolford was at his best in the early 2000s have the Raiders had such an influential player at dummy half. A sharp passer who leads his forwards onto the ball, Hodgson also ran the ball effectively making 50 metres a game despite averaging less than 60 minutes.
In another plus Hodgson also boasts a smart kicking game, when he isn’t kicking on the second or third tackle, accounting for four 40/20 kicks, the most by a hooker.
The good news for Raiders fans as the league moves to eight interchanges in 2016 is that in recent weeks Hodgson has progressed to playing 80 minutes a game, a capability which will be crucial for hookers under the new rules.
Finally it is well documented that the Raiders have long struggled to recruit and retain quality players but as a native of Hull, Hodgson is one of a select few international quality players for whom the Canberra weather is a decided upgrade.
Roster management
If the Raiders big problem this year was lack of composure in tight games then they have at least addressed the problem in recruitment, with established half Aidan Sezer joining from the Titans. Sezer, who has suffered through two injury-blighted seasons, is an efficient game manager with an elite kicking game who should complement Austin in the halves.
Additionally the club has again turned to Super League to recruit Elliot Whitehead, a try scoring backrower who debuted for England during the 2014 Four Nations.
On the other side of the ledger the traditional Ricky Stuart cull continues with David Shillington, Dane Tilse, Mitch Cornish, Mark Nicholls and Glen Buttriss all going or gone. Of those only Shillington may be missed, although after his hilariously awful play the last two weeks Raiders fans may be happy enough to see even him go.
Prognosis
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the Raiders might actually be building something.
After clearing out an older generation of front rowers the forward pack will now be led by the Sons of Sieffert Paul Vaughan and Shannon Boyd.
However beyond those two the club has only one recognised front rower, Frank-Paul Nuusuala, on the roster for 2016. Earlier in the year there were strong rumours that James Tamou might be lured to Canberra for family reasons however that story seems to have dried up. Whether Tamou is still a possibility or not the club will likely need to make some moves to strengthen the front row.
While the front row looks thin pending further recruitment the club is stacked in the back row with Jarrad Kennedy, recent debutant Mitch Barnett and Whitehead all expected to compete with the established group of Soliola, Papalii and Fensom.
Dig deeper and the club also has three players in Luke Bateman, Patrick Mago and Tevita Pangai Jr who have been mainstays in the back row for junior representative teams in recent years (though Pangai actually projects as a middle unit player in first grade and has played there in NSW Cup).
The club also has some depth in the backline with one of Jordan Rapana, Edrick Lee and Joey Leilua likely to miss out on a week to week basis. Even more encouragingly Jack Wighton seems to have finally adjusted to fullback, and has been the club’s best player in recent weeks.
So it is fair to say that the club has largely rebuilt the roster after injuries (Terry Campese, Tom Learoyd-Lahrs) and malfeasance (Todd Carney, Blake Ferguson and Josh Dugan) routinely robbed the team of key players for several years under David Furner.
The big question though will be whether the heart breaking losses in 2015 do in fact become lessons learned as everyone in the club is keen to proclaim they will be?
Can the team turn those agonising, often self-destructive losses into teaching moments and make the leap from mediocrity towards contention?
Predicted finish: fringe of the eight
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