Honestly, I don't know how we'll go this season. If everything clicks, the best case scenario is that we'll do pretty well finishing somewhere in the bottom end of the top 8. And if everything doesn't click, the worst case scenario isn't us being award the wooden spoon, an unlikely outcome in my opinion, its having another pedestrian season.
If you cut away the rather plentiful amount of fat from Gus's 'analysis', he raises a good point, how long can the Raiders be the most irrelevant club in the NRL? And when I say irrelevant, I don't mean in the sense we are the worst performing club in the competition, but rather that we are essentially a nothing club at present and have been for some time. We win just enough games during the season not to win the spoon and somehow drift into the 8 under the radar but we don't impress anyone enough to think, 'hey these guys have a chance'. We have zero stars. Even the 'sorta-woulda-shoulda' stars and the blokes who have been around-so-long-its-hard-not-to-know-their-name players are gone, which makes the Raiders the least marketable team in the NRL. It's getting to that stage when most young people in the ACT region aren't old enough to remember 1994, so much to the point that the word 'raider' is more synonymous as a punch line to a football related joke rather than a football related team.
The outcome of this season is going to be vital for the future of our beloved franchise. It’s not a case of winning the premiership or even having to finish top 4, it’s more of a case of the Raiders having to play an exciting brand of football week in week out, producing a marquee player(s) with national recognition, drawing decent crowds and most importantly becoming a product that the ACT region can be proud of.
