- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
There are a lot of miserable parts of being a Raiders fan this year.
After a semi-promising beginning to the season – the club was actually two and two after four rounds – the club now seems to be on a fast track to the wooden spoon as the floggings pile up.
Surprisingly though, the worst part about the Raiders season hasn’t been the drubbings.
Getting beaten by 40 or 50 points is unpleasant but almost every team in the competition has been on the wrong end of one or two of those in the last few years.
No, the worst part of this season is how many times the Raiders have let the opposition have a bad game and still win. They say the mark of the great team is that they find a way to win even when they’re playing badly. If that is the case, then surely it is the mark of an awful team that they find a way to lose even when the opposition is playing awfully.
Just how badly have teams that have beaten the Raiders played? In 14 losses this year the Raiders have won either the missed tackle or error count on eight occasions.
The club has lost games where the opposition made double digit errors on numerous occasions. In Round 10 for instance, the Panthers missed 43 tackles, made nine errors and made only a paltry 1102 running metres and still beat the Raiders.
The Bulldogs had 21 missed tackles and 11 errors in their recent win in Canberra. The Broncos had 22 missed tackles and ten errors and still crushed Canberra 28-4.
When you play the Eagles or the Roosters or the Dogs you know you’re going to have to beat them; they’re not going to beat themselves. At the moment teams know they don’t need to be at their best, or toughest, to beat Canberra. They just need to show up.
Actually there is one thing even worse than letting the opposition play badly and still win. That is knowing exactly what the problem is and not fixing it. Any Raiders fan will tell you there are two major problems with the Raiders this year.
Firstly, the team has zero attack inside the opposition half. Let’s be clear, the Raiders forwards, and in particular Dave Shillington, have been doing their job in attack recently.
The forwards are gaining the field position the team needs and the team is getting repeat sets. But when given these opportunities in attack there doesn’t seem to be any plan beyond give it to Milf or bomb it to Croker.
The second main problem, and arguably the more pressing one, is the team’s defence on the edges. Quite simply it has been appalling. Teams have been going around the Raiders literally the entire season.
The Raiders left edge is reported to have conceded the most points of any unit in the competition and it’s easy for Raiders fans to believe that. Jarrod Croker attracts a lot of criticism for his defence and a lot of that is justified, but he is all too often left on island by his inside men.
Not that the right edge defence is much better. Whether it has been the departing Matt Allwood, the almost certainly departing Reece Robinson or the never to be seen again Bill Tupou, the right edge has also been a disaster.
When asked about the edge defence during Sunday’s post-match press conference Stuart said, “It umm can be fixed.”
Not exactly inspiring stuff, but it is worth remembering that the club was missing its best backline defender in Jack Wighton and powerhouse winger Edrick Lee. The inclusion of those two, plus Sisa Waqa next season, will go some way to improving the edge defence.
But the central figure in this tragedy remains Terry Campese. Sadly if the Raiders two main problems are lack of creativity in attack and edge defence then Campo is personally a big reason for both of those.
That Campese is no longer a first-grade standard five-eighth is now undoubted. I’ve written about it on the Roar and so have others. His attack is gone and his defence is terrible. At times on Sunday it seemed like the Warriors’ game plan was essentially middle, middle, middle, attack Campese.
This brings us to one final worst thing about being a Raiders fan this year: team list Tuesday.
Due to the club’s own poor roster development and arcane second tier salary cap rules the team is essentially hamstrung in who they can pick.
So on the weekend the team loses to a mediocre or downright bad team. They generally do so in exactly the same way as they lost the previous week, and the week before that and so on. Then, on Tuesday the same group of players gets picked.
What’s the old line about the definition of madness being doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?
However this week will finally see changes after injury forced Ricky’s hand. Leading lights Shillington and Fensom will be absent but more importantly so will Terry Campese. Hopefully for Raiders fans, Tuesday will see a bold move to the future for the club with promising junior half Mitch Cornish brought back to first grade.
In three games to date Cornish has shown flashes of the talent that made him a junior Kangaroo halfback selected over Luke Brooks. Raiders fans will be hoping that the time back in reserve grade has only helped to nurture that talent.
If nothing else, Raiders fans deserve something to hold onto after this disaster of a season.
Reckon you can pick the winning team? Build your own dream team with Draftstars daily fantasy and compete on any match. For great odds on the NRL head on over to PlayUp. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.