The Green Machine

Last night I went to my first rugby league match with the JB family.  We were watching the "semi-final" between the local team, the Canberra Raiders (aka the Green Machine) and Wests Tigers, who are presumably from somewhere in the west. (Western Sydney apparently, so East in fact!).

Its finals season in rugby league, the actual league part is over and done and dusted, but like all good commercial sporting fixtures there's got to be some-kind of play-off system to decide who really won.  I guess its a bit like playing next goal wins at the end of a football game.  The top eight go into the playoffs in a very complicated system known as the Duckworth-Lewis method, sorry McIntyre Final Eight System. Might as well be the same thing.  Teams are ranked to aim to make it easier for those who actually did well during the real season.  And the games are played over four weeks, with two teams eliminated each week.  (Why they can't just give the top two a bye to a second round I don't know). But teams are given different priorities.  In the first week, known as the qualifying final, all eight teams play, the top two can't go out if they lose, but get a bye if they win, the bottom two definitely go out if they lose and the rest inbetween either go out or stay in depending on their result and the ones around them.  Its a crazy system that requires the games to be played in a certain order  to avoid dead rubbers.  The second week is called the semi finals and involves the two highest ranked losers and two lowest ranked winners from the first week.  The third week is known as the Preliminary final and is actually a semi-final.  And the final final on the final week is the Grand Final rather than just the Final because they've been having finals for about a month now. Confused? I was!  JB suggests you need a Masters to understand the system properly.  he's probably right.  Anyway, if you'd like to know more then check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntyre_Final_Eight_System

A bit like Blackpool's meteroic rise in the Championship last season, the Canberra Raiders had been having a bit of a poor season, but picked it up towards the end becoming the only team all season to win six in a row and nine in ten matches as they found their way into the finals slots.  They then beat the second-place team in the first week of the finals and consequently found themselves rewarded with a home fixture against the third place team, Wests Tigers.  So here we were, JB is a massive fan of the Raiders so managed to get tickets.  The roads were blocked, the local papers and radio had been on about nothing else all day. And it was already reasonably full when we arrived just before seven for a 7:45 kick-off.

The stadium was pretty good, it was a record sellout crowd for the club given the situation and was quite cool, built into a hill like the LA Dodgers or Olympiastadion in Munich.  In the UK, I'm used to small stadia being quite boxy, such as Selhurst Park for example, which holds about the same number of people (Just over 26,000).  However the Canberra Stadium is just like a mini version of a bigger stadium, though with just the two multi-tier covered sides.  A bit like most modern small stadia I guess, I just haven't been to many.  There were a lot of Tigers fans in the crowd.  Since Canberra has only had a rugby league franchise (I hate the term franchise when it comes to sports - it sounds so purposely commercial) since 1982, most people in the town have an outside Canberra team still either as the one they support (or "go out for") or a second favourite.  So there's often a strong away crowd at these matches.

The match itself was entertaining, if not quite as fluid as I thought it was going to be.  The Raiders were pretty poor, but found themselves going into half-time only a converted try behind at 18-12.  The second half was more even, with the Raiders and Tigers matching themselves try for try, but a penalty successfully scored by the Tigers (albeit there was some dodgy refereeing all night) and a later one missed by the Raiders left the final score at 26-24.  The Raiders out, and season over, and despite the loss I reckon all the only slightly drunk people in the ground appreciated the fact that the better team over the match and season had won. And that the Raiders had had a pretty good past few months, albeit peaking with their win over 2nd place Penrith Panthers.  It was a good evening, but freezing!