Raiders in third spot on NRL ladder

and an assistant SOO coach last year. He has the coaching credentials and is of the same ilk as Craig Bellamy (and look what he’s done)

Let’s not forget that Neil Henry was also a foundation player for the Raiders, back in the 80’s.

“West Belconnen Magpies”

That’s an AFL team, I think you mean West Belconnen Warriors.

Aside from that you’re spot on

The Eagles were very flat indeed. I think they will struggle to make the 8 despite their latest attempt to buy a premiership.

It will be very hard for the Raiders to keep any ‘local talent’ if they keep getting flogged like this. They need to buy big this year.

Last year they had their pick of one of the world’s best coaches (Chris Anderson) who would’ve attracted big name players. Instead they went with this old boy minnow from the West Belconnen Magpies. Sack the (untouchable) board.

I sincerely hope they prove me wrong, however

Manly struggled into the 8 last year and have 1 new player who had no real impact on the game. The Raiders got flogged. I don’t need to wait. It pains me, but they got nothin’

Unlike the Sydney media, i’d like to see a month or two worth of matches, before totally writing them off.

No probs at all with the Fox coverage out my way, and a great thing done by Fox. Means I can get to bed before midnight when the Green are playing.

Having said that I was hoping the Raiders would stick it up the big boys this year. After last night I know there’s no hope of that. They need to build a team around a genuine leader and marquee player. There won’t be too much development of the ‘local’ talent when their bums get handed to them every weekend. They don;t have a genuine line breaker in the forwards (and please don’t say Tilse is) and Carney is too inconsistent. Yes, he’s young, he’s also in his 3rd year of 1st grade. Some of that consistent talent should be on show by now.

I used to make the parents take us out to Seiffert in ’82. What I saw last night genuinely saddened me. A consistent 5/8 with some ‘go forward’, like Fittler at his peak, is what is needed

Needless to say it was a disappointing game, compounded by the fact that the Foxtel signal kept dropping out at our place, to be replaced with a black screen.

Changing the channel (and back again) fixed the problem, but in the first instance we were time-shifting the game by about 20 minutes.

This meant that when we came across the black screen, the only option available was to fast-forward through 20 mins of black screen to catch up to the live stream, then change the channel.

Very annoying.

I should say (including tonights game) the next 3/5 Raiders games are Saturday night games. The other 2/5 are Monday night games.