Broncos vs. Raiders Preview

Hands on hips lads. Source: News.com.au

This weekend makes for a very interesting match-up indeed. On paper, the Broncos should steam-roll the Raiders into oblivion. You only needed to watch the Raiders and Cowboys last weekend to see what I mean - any team that establishes a 22 point lead and then loses is a team in trouble. The Broncos are down on troops with Locky, Hannant, Yow Yeh, Parker and Thaiday all being on Origin duty and several players being out injured. This means our lineup has only 676 games between them (average of 39.7) and Gagai, Norman, Reed, Moylan, Baptiste, Copley, Hala and Lui all have under 20 games of NRL experience. 

Canberra aren't fairing much better - Dugan just got re-injured, Campo is out again for 3 months (poor bastard) and they are also missing Orford and Vidot. Dugan, Campo and Vidot are losses that will hurt them just as much as ours do, Orford however has been utterly useless so his 'injury' is actually a godsend for the men in green. For any non-believer, watch this appropriately named video.

So really it's going to be 2 depleted teams battling it out for 2 competition points. I normally hate all of the 'playing for their season' talk this early but there's some merit to this one. Historically you need at least 28 points to make finals - the Raiders have 12 games left plus a bye, meaning they realistically need to win 9 from 12 of their remaining matches. When those 12 include matches against Brisbane, Melbourne, St George, New Zealand and Newcastle, it's hard to see this happening.

The most exciting match-up this weekend will be Alan Tongue and Andrew McCullough. Tongue has been a favourite of mine for a number of years due to his hard-nosed defence and old school attitude. Macca is on the other end of the scale - a constant under-performer who only looks good when we play teams such as the Sharks. Macca needs to step up big time and this weekend would be a fantastic time to do it.

With the above being said, we can expect the Raiders to come out fired up after the embarrassment of their last game and the prospect that after round 12, they are fighting for their season. The Broncos will have it tough for sure but being at home, I can see us taking this in a tight one. Prediction? 14-12 Broncos.