A foreword. As it turns out, a FIFA Women’s World Cup followed by a FIBA Men’s Basketball World Cup is quite a time suck on the old content generator, which is why this newsletter has taken a bit of a backseat over the last month or so.
If you are interested in the content from the FIFA Women’s World Cup, check out the main site, Beyond The Fence, and for the basketball content, my other newsletter, The Antisocial Basketballer.
Anyway, on with the footy.
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We’re finally at the end of the 2023 regular season, a perilous journey filled with so many twists and turns it would make even RL Stine blush. While the top end of the ladder was fairly secure between Penrith and Brisbane, the lower half of the eight was a kaleidoscope of confusion, teams falling ass backwards into success or just straight up ass backwards out of the eight entirely.
Meanwhile, teams with red pen stricken through their names made a late charge, some more successful than others, the timing of the run often coming down to a point here and there, a lost opportunity, a gutsy win.
There are a swathe of narratives to choose from to unpack heading into this finals series. Maybe the Rabbitohs becoming the first team to lead the competition after Round 10 to miss the finals entirely? How about the Cowboys charging up the ladder only to surrender a meek effort in their win and in game in Penrith? Or Parramatta, Grand Finallists a year ago, limping lamely to a 10th place finish amidst a lost season of injury and ill discipline.
The theme of those teams obviously is, outside Penrith, all three of those squads filled out the preliminary finals last year, and yet all will be watching September from their couches, a timely reminder of the fragility of contention.
But no, today we’re here to talk about a roster of bumbling rubes and a pack of charmed travellers.
I speak of course, of the historically dreadful Canberra Raiders and the undead Sydney Roosters.
Canberra have had maybe one of the oddest seasons in recent memory. After a not insignificant portion of the season, the men from the capital were seated inside the top four, yet with a points differential so bad it rivalled the likes of the Dolphins and the Titans.
You’ve heard of the old adage of fucking around and finding out, I’m sure. Canberra went through the entire season without so much as an inkling of self-enlightenment. A season played not on a football field, but a cursed minesweeper board, the Raiders seemingly having run out of playable squares, and yet still alive to tell the tale.
Watching the Raiders this season is like watching a man’s slow yet obvious descent into madness and delirium, an obsessive gripped with paranoia, much like Johnny in the 2003 cult film The Room.
This freefall and self-inflicted capitulation is no more evident than in Ricky Stuart’s explosion at a television camera during the Raiders’ penultimate fixture, a 29-18 loss to Brisbane. Not to overanalyse a single piece of cinema (lets call it what it is), but it gave off the impression of cracks beginning to form in the stiff outer shell of the Raiders resistance.
After all, this is a team that was sitting in fourth position after Round 20, but who would go on to win only two of their last 7 games to scrape into 8th position, relying on other results, with a for and against that was already despicable back then, going from -55, to a frankly putrid and logic-defying -137.
To frame just how woeful the Raiders differential is, that -137 mark is (obviously) the worst of the remaining finals teams, but also eclipses all other teams in its putridity except the Bulldogs, Dragons and Tigers. Yes, those teams all finished in the bottom three. In fact, the Raiders only two wins since Round 20 have been a 4 point squeaker against the Tigers where they surrendered a big lead, and an unconvincing 36-24 win over the Dogs.
There’s panic and decomposition afoot in Canberra, evidenced by some of the team selections in recent weeks. Coming into finals you want as settled a roster as possible.
Why then, after playing all year at fullback and being serviceable, is Sebastian Kris suddenly on the wing? Why has Jordan Rapana now gone back to fullback? Why on earth is Jack Wighton in the centres? To accommodate a Frawley-Fogarty halves pairing? It’s the last days of Van Gogh from Sticky, the ravings of a madman.
Compare that to the shadows of the finals, those perennially underrated Sydney Roosters, who stormed into contention after rattling off 6 wins from their last 7. Using that same Round 20 mark, the Roosters were 14th, and their players were being told by everyone in media to look on Flight Centre for cheap deals to Bali.
In fact, the Roosters haven’t lost since a 32-10 defeat to Brisbane in Round 22, peeling off five straight victories against Manly, the Dolphins, the Eels, the Tigers and the by then-headless Rabbitohs in a win and in derby in the final round.
The Roosters squad still doesn’t impose on paper, and they’re without Jared Waerea-Hargreaves for the rest of the season through suspension and Daniel Tupou for this week at least with injury, but they’re doing typical Roosters nonsense in getting contributions out of a bunch of guys your average punter wouldn’t recognise at Bunnings on a Sunday morning.
The unheralded guys in their backline like Billy Smith and Junior Pauga are providing enough with ball in hand to cover the losses of Tupou and Joseph Manu (who could return this week), while Egan Butcher and Siua Wong have provided real impact and stability in their forward pack.
The real wildcard though is Sam Walker, who returned from a lengthy absence and brief reserve grade stint to lead the Roosters the last two weeks, and while he hasn’t set the world on fire, he’s been solid enough without being overly spectacular to provide a nice foil to Luke Keary, something that Sandon Smith or Drew Hutchison weren’t exactly providing on a consistent basis.
While we talk about seventh and eighth here, theirr fortunes and paths look more like a team comfortably in the lower half of the top 8 with 3 weeks left vs a team that should really be taking Instagram selfies of their holidays in Europe.
For the Raiders, they face a daunting road trip up to Newcastle against a Knights team built to expose the Raiders many weaknesses. The Knights back three of Ponga, Young and Marzhew have been dynamic all season, and with all the question marks around the Raiders edge defence, expect Bradman Best to have a field day.
Then again, this is a Raiders team that has defied expectations, consistently ignoring how truly shit they’re supposed to be and eeking out wins where the data says they should lose by 20. It’s an inexact science but by god it works, and I’m not brave enough to say the shithousing ends here.
As for the Roosters, they travel to Shark Park to play Cronulla in front of tens of fans and several construction workers. I kid of course, the stadium debate is tired and I have no interest in wading into it this week.
On the Sharks, after looking like they were freefalling similar to Souths, they managed to steady enough and consolidate, and while I don’t think the Roosters should fear them, Nicho Hynes has steadied his form the last month or so, and Cronulla are playing much more coherently and unified to the team in danger of becoming a footnote mere weeks ago.
To end on more poorly-shoehorned pop culture references, the Raiders are Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove, comfortable for so long, yet should be dead but given a second chance to make amends. Meanwhile the Roosters are Richie and Clark from The Benchwarmers. Two months ago it looked like they didn’t know which end of the footy to hold, and now they’re in the finals and playing well enough to knock off a win.
Let there be chaos.
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MAILBAG
I’ve been wanting to do some sort of mailbag for a while now but I thought it’d be best to wait until the Finals, so consider this a call for questions.
If we have enough interest, I’ll publish the mailbag either Thursday or Friday. Feel free to comment questions down below here, or tweet me @bensquag.
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A FAVOUR TO ASK
With Twitter sucking the proverbial right now, it’s getting harder to get these articles out there and seen outside of the circles I already travel in. If you do enjoy these and know someone else who might, please consider passing it along.
We’re so close to 200 subscribers, a number I thought would be impossible to reach this season as a random on the internet nattering about footy, so the support is truly appreciated and humbling.