The Young & The Restless Raiders

I understand that blog wise I have – what is the correct terminology here – dropped the ball. This ball dropping extends to all areas of my life. Whatever. Dropping balls is as legitimate a lifestyle as any. Just ask the Raiders.

In the event, I actually blame the Raiders. Who doesn’t.  

The Raiders were the one relationship I trusted to sustain, distract and comfort me in times of uncertainty and I didn’t notice it happening at the time but at some point during the season this relationship took a grievous turn toward near-total apathy so that three months’ worth of incidents and machinations failed to elicit any emotion or response from me at all but seeing the Raiders describe Jarrod Croker as a “flashy” player on Facebook causes me to flip the fuck out.

Setting aside the season-spanning, serialised saga of ceaseless negativity, the Raiders appear to have reached a new juncture in their grim narrative by categorising Croker as a “flashy” player.

This is what they’ve come to. They are so parched of hope and devoid of talent that Croker now rates as a flashy player.

Ye Gods. Because no offence to Jarrod but I register strong objections to this claim. Actually, offence.  

He doesn’t pass, he can’t tackle, and even if you don’t take into account the permanent internal damage that missed kick in 2010 obviously inflicted he still looks like he’s perpetually on the brink of a psychic meltdown and needs his mum.

Here is Croker holding back the beckoning abyss

Leaving aside his undiagnosed and chronic PTSD, the nice – not flashy, nice - thing about Croker is that he has no desire to ever leave Canberra. He is HAPPY in Canberra. He enjoys a FULL AND VIBRANT LIFE in Canberra. He didn’t even want to leave Goulburn to move to Canberra and make grade because the carefully laid out roads alarmed and overwhelmed him. There is something essentially decent about this, especially in light of what has been happening at the Raiders for a long time but was thrown into rude relief this year so that they are now what are referred to in professional media circles as a “problem club”, which is also nice.   

Here is Dugan signing with the Dragons

Of course, the professionals are right, but most of this year’s unpleasant ‘problems’ are representative of a psychological syndrome at the Raiders that I notice has become steadily and now suddenly worse as the years wear on – that of finding Canberra a dissatisfying and dispiriting place to live and play in.

Canberra is not going to change. Young and restless players are going to continue to find themselves trapped in Sartre-like “huis clos” – a “no exit” hell of their own making, and will continue to lose fans and alienate people by seeking or forcing releases.

Here is Blake being bad 

Short of relocating the entire club to Perth I don’t know what can be done about this.  

Performance-wise, the Raiders veer between the passable and the incompetent. Off-field, they have always maintained a relatively calm surface which has been ruptured at obligingly spaced intervals by the sort of scandals that are better understood if you keep a copy of the ACT’s criminal statutes handy and prominent.

The gradual and then sudden unspooling of Todd Carney’s entire Canberra career, Joel Monaghan being blown by a teammate’s dog, Josh Dugan confounding everyone by turning out to be a total dickhead and Blake Ferguson making me so sad I can’t even bring myself to mention him beyond this point on here are some of the more seismic ruptures.

See also:

Coach Furner’s sacking

The senior player revolt that led to Coach Furner’s sacking

Hemorrhaging hundreds of points in a series of huge late season losses

Suffering the most catastrophic loss in club history – Storm 68 Raiders 4

Dropping from a lofty ladder position to one lower than Clint Eastwood’s balls but still higher than the Eels

Papa Josh announcing his plans to join the priesthood

Anthony Milford’s attempts to avoid having to suffer the dreadful corrosive reality of living in Canberra now that people outside of Canberra know his name        

Papa and Milford going rogue and getting on the drink two days before their must win match against the Warriors in Auckland which   

Papa throwing up in their hotel corridor

Letting Sam Williams go and now facing the very real possibility of going from having too many halves to no halves next year

Sandor Earl being awarded the opportunity to explore his capacities for regret, despair and banned substances outside of the NRL  

The death of #Dorguson

Ricky Stuart

Here are Papa and Milford being best friends



Here are Papa's shorts creeping into his crotch 

 

Here is Milford's hair
 

Here is Blake being bae

Here is everyone who has anything to do with the Raiders

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Brother is a Self-Hating Raider Fan

The Raiders.

Maddening.

They madden no one more than my brother.

It pains him to follow them, yet he does so forensically.

They drive him to aggressive distraction, yet he cannot stop with them.

It’s a deeply complicated business. To cope, he does what we do when those we love but wish to Christ we didn’t love disappoint and pain us – he treats them with obsessive cruelty and holds them in serious contempt.

And while he claims to wish he could quit them, somewhere, in the dark recesses of his brain and bone marrow, there is great love and tenderness for the Raiders.  The conflict this creates  - great and abiding loyalty overlaid with everyday weariness and woe – is essentially what makes him a self-hating Raider fan.

My phone reception was down all night so we didn’t get to exchange the usual stream of profound and brutal texts. He doesn’t have Foxtel so he goes out in public to watch them and this probably magnifies his pain when they lose but he seems to like sitting among down-and-outs and listening to their unique commentary and some of the things he hears we immediately incorporate into our own commentary, like a few years ago, when Daniel Vidot made a break, and an old man stiffened, sat up ramrod straight and screamed “RUN YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” We use that one a lot.

In the early hours of the morning my sleep was ruptured by my phone barring up and receiving texts, including the mysterious question from my best friend: “Are you the feminist environmental league????” but mostly coming from my brother.

They are looking alright but no better than the Warriors. What happened to Shillo? Is Earl down too?

William called. No voicemail message was left.

God Croker is a ball hog – pass it to your winger you fool IT’S A TEAM SPORT.

William called. No voicemail was left.

This is turning into rot.

William called. No voicemail was left.

Total rot.

William called. No voicemail was left.

This is the worst set I have ever seen.

William called. No voicemail was left.

This is killing me.

 

Apparently it didn’t kill him because after he’d left (“the place went OFF after that last Lee try!”) and returned home he had the wherewithal to call my old broke-down phone, which I had had the wherewithal to switch on, and after raving excitedly about the mystifying nature of the Raiders, which is what we do following 90% of their wins and most of their losses too when I think about it, he said “Alright I have to go – my Kiev’s will be overdone – I slipped home at halftime to put them in the oven – but I tell you, if they’d lost I would have come home and thrown them against the wall!”

He would have, too, and the thing is it requires almost no imagination to envision the circumstances in which this could have occurred. Maddening.

"And now Blake Ferguson's gran-mama 'aint the only girl callin' him baby"

 - Raiders Sharks Semi-Final -

Joey Johns picked Blake Ferguson as his “impact player” yesterday which as I understand it is the ‘player’ he thinks will make an ‘impact’ of some significance. He would have been my choice too, had Channel Nine have asked me to contribute. I had actually opened up 60 minutes of my schedule to specifically address the “impact player” issue in the hours prior but the call never came through..

I love Blake Ferguson. As well as being my favourite “impact player” I also pick him as my favourite ever “DOCS graduate”. Not only because he wasn’t found dead and stuffed in a suitcase as a baby, but because he is just generally awesome and adorable and athletically freaky WHAT IS WITH HIS FINGERTIP CONTROL HOW DOES HE GET THOSE PICKUPS AND HAVE YOU SEEN HIM UNDER A HIGHBALL WHAT ABOUT WHEN HE ACCELERATES HOLY FUCK HE GOES LIKE A GREEN STREAK AND HOW ABOUT THE WAY HE CAN TIPPY-TOE WHO TAUGHT HIM TO TIPPY-TOE LIKE THAT IS IT A NATURAL GIFT OR WAS IT COACHING STAFF AT THE SHARKS BEFORE HE DISSED THEM AND UNCEREMONIOUSLY DEPARTED FOR THE RAIDERS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PERSONAL HAPPINESS AND PREMIERSHIP GLORY THAT HE DID NOT BELIEVE THE SHARKS OFFERED BUT BELIEVED THE RAIDERS DID AND DOESN’T THAT APPEAR TO BE THE BEST DECISION OF HIS LIFE HOW HAPPY DOES HE LOOK PLAYING ALONGSIDE SANDOR EARL AND JOSH DUGAN HOW GANGSTER ARE THEY HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING CUTER NO YOU HAVEN’T HAVE YOU EXCEPT MAYBE WHEN HE SAYS HI TO HIS GRANDPARENTS AFTER A GAME THAT’S PRETTY CUTE TOO ISN’T IT HUH HUH HELLO IS THIS THING ON  -  -  -

                                                                                         ---

The Raiders Rattle The Storm.

The inner flutterings of my intuition told me the Raiders were going to win this game. I texted my brother, I told him “I predict an upset, same as last year!” “Not me” he wrote back. My hold on the real world has always been slight at best, but something tells me I am right and he is wrong and I serenely ignore his suggestion, and everyone else’s (except, I imagine, the lovely and ever-loyal Laurie Daley) that the Raiders will be badly beaten.

The game starts but I am making custard in the kitchen. I don’t know what I miss but it probably involves Cooper Cronk rushing around being authoritative and yappy.

Raiders post the first points, ten minutes in. Blake Ferguson does sensational athletic things under the high ball, comes up with it, slams it down, leaps up and slams the ball away. Huzzah. Croker converts. 6-0.

Ferguson is playing with two spectacular black eyes. I note with interest that he has never looked better. He looks less like a half-formed amphibian and more Tyler Durden.

Reece Robinson gets a ball to Sandor Earl and Earl gets over. It’s pronounced “Shannnndor”. Is that Celtic? Those stars on his thighs don’t look very Celtic. I remember sitting in Bruce Stadium in 2010, when he was on the wing for Penrith, staring at that star-spangled thigh and thinking it was one of the more horrendous assemblages of tattoos I had seen. This was back when Joel Monaghan was on the wing for the Raiders. It was a good time, 2010. You sat right down close to the sideline so you could hear the hits and the things that people called out to Monaghan – nice things, because Monaghan was nice – and often Monaghan, because he was right there, would turn and look and acknowledge the shout-out. Usually it was just “HEY MONAGHS!!!” but once it was “HEY MONAGHS YOU’RE A FUNNY FUCK!!” which was astute, because he was, and didn’t that sense of humour prove to be his ultimate undoing - which, as the (my) theory goes, marked the general decline in morale and cohesion at the Raiders, the results of which we are still seeing, circa 2012. But I digress.

Cameras cut to Mal Meninga sitting broodily in some lofty box. The commentators announce he has been in the Raiders dressing rooms. Doing what, I wonder? I have no time and no appetite for Mal Meninga. I would rather hear that Ricky Stuart had been in the dressing room, frankly. Croker’s conversion fails; he sends a large lump of grass a good way up into the air though. 10-0.

Play resumes and Croker gets a flick-pass away. Several seconds later Brandy Alexander says words to the effect of “Croker raced up and made first contact.” This is all very, very strange. Unfamiliar.

Fifteen minutes in the Storm get their first real chance to post points. The Storm post points. This, this is familiar. Momentum shifts and swings towards the Storm. Doom-tinged doubt creeps in to my mind. This is exactly what these Raiders cannot handle. Defensive tests unnerve them, they unravel. Earl, who has just been tossed into touch a moment prior, gets up out of the line to shut things down for Melbourne on the fifth. I exhale. Relief. After defending their own line Canberra have a good set of six. My god. Also, they’re offloading. I’ve never seen the Raiders offload en masse like this. Twenty five minutes in and their completion rate is 9 from 10. My god in heaven.

The Storm make an error. Reece Robinson passes long to Eddrick Lee, who juggles, re-gathers and crosses for a try in the corner. Croker, gaping like a hooked fish, misses by a mile. 14-6.

Next thing, while I’m occupying myself wondering whether the Raiders can get through a solid set after posting points, they are occupying themselves by immediately going ahead and posting some more points. Quick hands from Josh McCrone to Ferguson, who busts a tackle, fends like T-Rex and links with Earl – TRY!

Next, Anthony Quinn knees Ferguson in the head. It flattens him. Eventually he wobbles to his feet.

In the 39^th minute Justin O’Neil gets a second try for the Storm, on Canberra’s left side. The problem side. Fun fact that is really no fun at all: Canberra has conceded 34 tries through their left hand side this year. Their left hand side defense gapes like a ripped circus tent, basically.

Halftime, 20-12. As they run off Mark Gasnier looms up and opines of Canberra “they’re actually doing a Melbourne Storm on the Melbourne Storm!” He gets this out without fucking it up and is clearly very pleased with himself. It still astonishes me that anyone would give Mark Gasnier a microphone, but at this time I’m feeling generous and find myself murmuring something like “good on you Gaz”, which is neither a sentence nor a sentiment I am familiar with. This is an unusual night all round.

Still, I’m not comfortable. To be a Raiders fan is to be in a perpetual state of discomfort. They can’t be trusted. They are famously unreliable. Also, the Storm are irritatingly reliable. And they love a strong second half. I picture them in the dressing room, being re-programmed with Bellamy’s exclusive and secret ‘retreat, evaluate, recalibrate’ software. The thought makes me feel extremely edgy.

The second half starts. A ball from McCrone leaves the Storm looking a long way short in defense and gets Eddrick Lee over for his second try. Lee was on track to becoming a basketball superstar until advice from an uncle swayed him towards football. He’s fucking massive; a big, lanky, loose assemblage of limbs and circuitry. Croker misses the conversion. No offence, but can’t someone else do it? Actually, offence. He stinks. 24-12.

Cronk kicks a 40/20. This is not good. This is very, very bad.

The Raiders hold the Storm back, but only barely. They get the ball back and advance it up the field with an ease and aptitude that I have never seen.

With 56 minutes gone Croker scores a try from a Joel Thompson one-arm offload, much to the distress of Cronk, who is screaming maniacally at Strom players to slide across, slide across! The Storm are ruffled! Less surprisingly, so is the terminally inept Mark Gasnier. He interjects to observe that “three repeat sex – pardon me – sets - for the Raiders here…” I get up to light some incense.

Next, McCrone throws a long looping ball out to Earl. Another try! Another missed conversion.

Shaun Fensom makes a bust and sets off down the field like a great thundering bison.

Robinson gets a ball to Lee, who makes it a hat trick of tries, which in turn makes a lump form in my throat. Croker, who looks like he has a perpetual lump in his throat, makes the conversion. This takes it to 40-12, the largest margin the Storm have ever been beaten by at AAMI Park. Audacious. We really have no business beating the Storm at all, let alone at their home ground, and by a record breaking margin. I relax and begin to revel in this unaccustomed brilliance.

The siren goes. David Furner winks at some unseen person from the coaching box. Such is my mood that I find this rakishly charming. Alluring, even. Winning throws a golden glow over what would otherwise be a sleazy and lowbrow gesture from a man as flinty as Furner. Ferguson and Earl do a special handshake, one with twitching fingers and pumping motions. This is also charming.

Gasnier, chatting amiably to a peevish Jason Ryles, says that the Storm were ‘uncharacteristical.’ This is not the first time I have heard Gasnier use this non-word. I can’t help but feel that the leap from leaving an absurdist 4 a.m. voicemail message to sideline commentary has been something of a stretch for Gasnier. He is far better suited to the former, I feel. I’m no expert, but surely that must be the greatest voicemail message in Australian history. The flashes of lewd, Wild-like wit are unparalleled in their excellence.

Finally, cameras cut to the Raiders dressing sheds. They’re all in a big circle clapping and hoo-haa-ing and belting out the team song and then Eddrick Lee breaks ranks, moves into the centre of the circle, drops to the floor and STARTS DOING THE WORM.