Raiders' utterly pointless record A TERRIBLE season for Canberra reached its nadir in the nation's capital yesterday. Under grey skies, the Melbourne Storm arrived and held the Raiders scoreless at home for the first time in the club's 30-year history. Dark days indeed. A proud club watched its lingering hope of finals football go by the wayside as the insipid performance took an unwanted place in the record books.
Coach David Furner panned the performance of the referees afterwards, but there was no hiding the Raiders' inability to match one of the elite sides.
They offered precious little in attack, even with the return of fullback Josh Dugan. Instead, Dugan spent much of the game attempting to keep Melbourne at bay. Three times in the opening 35 minutes Dugan stopped the Storm scoring when tries looked inevitable.
In the end, even he couldn't stop the league leader continuing its march towards September. Asked afterwards what was left for his side this season, Furner spoke about individual accountability but admitted his options for change were limited by injuries that have decimated his squad.
"If you're coming up with those errors you mightn't find yourself in the side," Furner said.
"The dilemma at the moment is we have an injury list that has taken some quality out of that team. The flipside of that is just a little class on the other side and making us pay."
Asked about being held scoreless, Furner said: "That's a record isn't it, mate?
"I think the scoreboard certainly didn't reflect the attitude in our side. I know that. We came in at half-time and talked about what we needed to achieve with the ball.
"I said to the guys during the week, 'defensively if you clock off once they will make you pay'. Certainly not happy for the result but there were some contributing factors to that."
As for the referees, Furner claimed they hadn't helped his side and the Raiders need all the help they can get at the moment.
"They didn't have a good game," he said. "We had a couple of calls there. When you're in that sort of arm wrestle of a game there, they are big.
"Basically, I didn't think they had the best of games."
Furner isn't looking past the next game against the Dragons.
Source: theaustralian.com.au
Topic: Raiders' utterly pointless record
