Glory Glory to the Raiders…

It may not have been our best performance of the year, but it was gutsy. For 8 Rounds of the NRL we have struggled to hold teams to under 20 points. Last night we only let in 1 try. Anyway I’m sure everyone here wants to read about the trip as there are 1000 match reports out there.

The day started at around 3pm for me, where I watched KW go around in his division 7 Soccer Match at the UC. After what felt like an eternity, half time was finally blown and we met up with 4 other people and headed for Sydney. With beers in the esky we were on our way. The trip up seemed to go so quickly, I guess that was due to the fact we only had a 5 minute stop to grab some microwavable servo dinner and the trip being full of good fun conversation. The best one would have to be when we passed a hertz mini bus with other Raiders supporters, now it was quite clear they were also off to Telstra, so we just gave them the standard cheer and honk of the horn. However, it wasn’t as clear for 1 bloke who finally realised half an hour later when he exclaimed “They are going to the bunnies match for sure”. It is good to see that we have a potential detective within our ranks!

After quickly manoeuvring through Sydney we reached our destination, Telstra Stadium. I guess the good thing about Souths having such a big home Ground is the fact you can easily find a park. So after making a mental note of where we parked, we enter the stadium only to realise we need to be all the way round the other side! That’s one of the crap things about Telstra, you have to enter through certain gates. After a short hike we finally reached our seats. I must say it was quite good to see a pretty decent turnout of Raiders fans, Telstra Stadium is not the best place to watch footy, and we were coming off a shocking 2nd half performance vs. Manly. So well done!

7:30 arrived and there was hardly anyone in the ground, Russell Crowe’s huge PR campaign had obviously paid dividends…

The boys run out to a near empty stadium with the ground announcer trying to get fans to remind the Raiders that they are in Sydney, and to their credit the Souths fans reminded us that this is Sydney by having the stadium at minimal capacity just for us.

The game is underway and we are the better side early on with Both Carney and Goodwin coming close to scoring the opener. Sadly it’s those damn Bunnies who cross the line first through that bald headed hack Hegarty. By this point we are turning over a lot of possession, but somehow Souths can’t seem to put on any more points. Todd Carney misses a penalty goal right as the half wraps up, but it isn’t all bad as to go 6-0 down at half time is alright as we are still in striking distance.

Half time means a quick food run, the food itself looked pretty good so I grabbed a cheeseburger and some fries for the very “affordable” sum of around $200. I thought Canberra stadium food was dodgy, well Telstra took it to a whole new level. I couldn’t even finish the whole cheeseburger without dry wretching despite being incredibly hungry, and the hot chips weren’t that much better either.

After the short break the second half gets underway, and it’s not long before Campo breaks the line to put Milne in the clear. He scores under the posts and makes Peachey look like a complete clown at the same time. The bloke really has some speed in him and can find the white line when he needs to, and I mean the good white line not the Wendell Sailor type.

But in true Raiders style, after this try we go back to our trademark of turning over the ball and taking poor options. Souths get a penalty and take the 2. Not long after they get another penalty within kicking distance, but instead of trying to put us to the sword they take a further 2 points… I still cannot see the logic in this. We already had to score a try to win, now we can still win with a try, so the ultra conservative Rabbitohs plot themselves 4 ahead to the Massive roar of the Burrow/The Singers End. I think they are two seperate groups these days? A shame really, they would be huge if they combined.

I think the fact that the Bunnies didn’t have the balls to risk 2 points to gain lifted us, and I could sense an ‘upset’ occurring. So who else but our wonder boy from Goulburn Todd Carney would go over to put us in front by two after some great work from the Origin-bound Neville Costigan (that’s right I’m calling it).

But the job was not done yet as we still had to hold on for the win. Thankfully Neil Henry is our Coach now so we pushed for that extra try instead of trying control the tempo. This came through future Canberra Chief Minister Alan Tongue who put a superb cross field kick for debutant Bronx Goodwin to leap high and tap the ball straight to Adrian Purtell who dived over. This try coincided with that ‘dingus’ Russell (you can thank the Queanbeyean boys for coming up with that word) being put up on the big screen just so we could all point and laugh at him. However Carney’s missed conversion meant we hadn’t won the game yet, and just like the Raiders love doing they spilt possesion straight from the kick-off to give Souths a final chance to try and level the scores.

Fortunately for us Souths attack that night would struggle to score in a brothel, they dead set had nothing. Even when they made space, they would sabotage themselves by using ball hogging glory hunters like Hegarty.

Full time blew and we all went up as one. Once the Fox Sports editors had enough of our ugly mugs we made our way down to the sideline to congratulate the boys. To their credit they came over to the sideline shook hands and hugged the fans that made the trek. It was only afterwards that I noticed my jersey had some nice mud stains on it from hugging the likes of Withers, Miller, Goodwin and Co’s damp jerseys, maybe I should not wash it and eBay it, after all , how many jerseys out there have genuine Telstra Stadium mud on them?

Anyway enough side tracking, I think it is good for the team to show that much respect to fans, I doubt all the clubs in the NRL go to that much effort, especially after a regular season match. It wasn’t our best win of the season by any means, but the fact we ground it out and defended our line brilliantly left the players really pumped.

Leaving Telstra Stadium was brilliant, all Raiders fans merged together and walked out of the stadium chanting and singing. Sport is an amazing thing as it can unite total randoms in such a way nothing else comes close, in saying that it can also have the opposite effect.

After we got out of the gates we had a brief Seinfeld type moment where we forgot which level our car was parked on, fortunately the crap crowd and lack of cars meant we found it much quicker than expected.

A brief stop at Hungry Jacks for a feed and the bottle-o for beer where I was confirmed by a staff member that CARLTON UNITED BREWERS OWN FOSTERS NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! (Unfortunately some people still refuse to concede defeat on this). At that same bottle-o we managed to get a free bag of ice, to this day we still don’t know whether it was given to us in pity.

I think it is amazing just how much quicker the trip back down the Hume is after you record a victory, time flew by and we were back in Canberra in no time. To my surprise I ran into some Army regulars on the prowl in Civic just outside Ali Baba, was good to see them as well as the other random people that greeted me which included 1 bloke who decided to kiss me on the cheek in celebration. Still got no idea who it actually was…

To sum it up, Saturday was the perfect hit and run mission, leave Canberra 3:45, get to stadium 7:10, watch Raiders grind out victory, return to God’s country before 2am.

A few other quick notes:

* Again, great to see such an excellent turnout of Raiders fans, kudos to you all.

* Well done to David Milne and Bronx Goodwin, you may have solved our wing problems.

* Nathan Merritt not picked for rep sides because he’s aboriginal? Based on last night it was because he is an overrated dingus (yep I used that word again)

* Big thanks to Shannon Hegarty for butchering a try by being the ball hog he is.

* I woke up this morning with a nice sized bruise on my elbow… Still no idea how I got that.

* South Sydney Fans, it’s not the smartest idea to try to bag out the opposition fans as they leave the stadium after your team just LOST.

Thanks for reading once again… this is Marko, signing out.

South Sydney Away… Love it.

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