Riding the Raiders bandwagon, divisible by two

Some patterns are almost impossible to ignore. Farnesy’s last tour is inevitably his second last. Every second Star Trek film is watchable. And sometime around July in every even-numbered year, the Canberra Raiders will remember how to play football.

As surely you know that a busted clock tells the right time twice a day, you can guarantee that every second winter, blokes who’ve been looking at each other like complete strangers for the 20 months prior will realise they do know those other guys dressed in lime green.

Or white. Or camouflage, as the case may be.

Whatever the case, when Federal Parliament breaks for winter, the Raiders once again become the big show in town and start behaving accordingly – as long as it’s 2008, 2010, 2012, or any year divisible by two.

So what triggered the Great Green Machine Turnaround of 2012?

Was that 40-0 shellacking at the hands of the Wests Tigers on a wet and miserable night at the start of June the team’s night-is-darkest-before-the-dawn moment?

Did the so-called ‘Camp Furner’ on the New South Wales Central Coast before the team took on the might of Wayne Bennett’s Newcastle Knights galvanise Furner’s charges?

Perhaps it was the decision to start booking into a hotel 20 minutes out of town to trick players into believing a home game was in fact being played on enemy turf, thus creating some sort of reverse siege mentality?

A decision so groundbreaking that the New Zealand Warriors are considering checking in to the very same hotel before every game of the entire 2013 NRL season?

Or maybe it was because somewhere between June and September 2012, David Shillington remembered how to lead from the front, Jarrod Croker remembered how to tackle, and Josh McCrone discovered that he in fact possessed a peerless tactical kicking game?

Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

It was all of these things, and it was none of them.

Because the moment that defined it all – the moment that will see Canberra Stadium packed for the Blake Ferguson Cup this Sunday like it was in 2010 when Campo did his knee and Croker missed that penalty – slipped by almost unnoticed.

On August 9, 2012, Canberra Milk general manager Garry Sykes told The Canberra Times what every Raiders fan has been waiting to hear since 1995.

“Raiders Lime will be back next year, definitely,” Mr Sykes told the paper. “I have the artwork, it’s all approved and the cartons arrive in four weeks’ time.”

Just in time for the Raiders to play an unlikely home final – Mr Sykes quite clearly knew something special was brewing, not just at his dairy but in the bowels of Canberra Stadium.

I wasn’t there on that fateful night in 2010, but I wouldn’t miss this Sunday afternoon in the nation’s capital for the best seats in the house at the red carpet premiere of Star Trek 12.

And if they book Farnesy to belt out Playing To Win as the pre-match entertainment, the next round of Raiders Lime is on me.