Dan

Raiders Review: Exposure BY DAN The Canberra Raiders 42-6 defeat at the hands of the New Zealand Warriors was a capitulation in trying circumstances. It revealed that any pretence the Raiders could treat 2026 as a continua…

It did not go to plan

sportress.org/2026/03/13/r...

#NRLWarriorsRaiders
#UpTheMilk
#WeAreRaiders
#NRL

Charting the churn of NRL players Churn, upside and projections

Hey look its a serious post

www.maroonobserver.com/p/charting-t...

Heat Map of Alex Johnston's NRL tries. A pain to make but learnt some cool R packages in the process.

Not sure on the colour scheme so any constructive criticism is welcome.

#nrl #dataviz #dataart

Six, Again: Welcome to Hell BY DAN Welcome back to hell. Peter V’Landys personal vendetta against rugby league was in full display this weekend. Fuelled by the dystopian set restart rule, we got blowout after blowout. M…

For our email subscribers sportress.org/2026/03/09/s...

Science!

Canberra Raiders rookie halfback Ethan Sanders in a training shirt, giving something off camera a steely glare

Canberra Raiders five-eighth and all-time great player Laurie Daley, mid game, running the ball and giving an opponent off-camera a steely glare

Good news Canberra Raiders fans, I’ve applied detailed analytics to all available data and my predictive model is telling me that Ethan Sanders is going to be a great player on the very scientific basis that he has Laurie Daley Eyes

At least that can be fixed without a rule change

This is making hate footy and I don't want to hate footy

Gonna be one of those seasons. Thanks Vlando.

Now 12 ruck infringements in 51 minutes

Same as the total set restarts (including 10m offside) from 170 minutes in Vegas

Why Melbourne has been waiting a generation for someone like Sua Fa'alogo Sua Fa'alogo has been waiting for some time to become part of Melbourne's storied lineage of fullbacks, but nowhere near as long as Melbourne has been waiting for a player like him.

Wrote about Sua Fa'alogo and future that's been a long time coming in Melbourne www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

Team list takes BY DAN Hello and welcome to the 2026 season. Welcome to joy, pain, and the dreams of our ancestors. We walk the road again, hoping this time to get to our destination. It hasn’t happened for …

Some thoughts on the team list

sportress.org/2026/03/03/t...

Yeah, similarly I would have preferred leaning into the Pattie, and having Packer and Malachi Smith as potential options down the track. Stick evidently wants something else.

Raiders (Trial) Review: Hope and Hopeless BY DAN Ricky Stuart has always been clear about his disdain for pre-season footy, and in their 48-6 loss to the Cronulla Sharks the Canberra Raiders embodied that lack of enthusiasm wholeheartedly.…

Our review of a poor day out
#NRLSharksRaiders

sportress.org/2026/02/21/r...

Sixes and Sevens BY DAN Like most teams Canberra are still working out what to do with the newly extended bench. In the aftermath of victory over Melbourne’s second string team, most Raiders fans are pretty s…

A new challenge

sportress.org/2026/02/15/s...

The one stat that will define your team's NRL chances in 2026 With the preseason challenge well underway and the season-opening matches in Las Vegas on the horizon, find out the key numbers that will make or break your team's NRL chances for 2026.

Went back to an old gimmick - on The Other Website they used to call me Random Footy Facts www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...

PREVIEW: 2026 Gold Coast Titans [an even longer, more exasperated sigh]

"some read like the kind of people you’d want on the board of your football club... and others are Matthew Johns"

www.maroonobserver.com/p/preview-20...

How was the spiritual home?

Raiders (Trial) Review: Finding the groove BY DAN The Canberra Raiders 32-6 victory over the Melbourne Storm was an imperfect outing. Neither team really found their groove. That Canberra walked away so comfortably ahead on the scoreboard r…

Welcome back to footy

sportress.org/2026/02/13/r...

V’Lando-Leninist Thought Waiting for a Payne Haas backflip is not cope

Thinking I should use more old beer ads for the intermission, instead of actual footy.

www.maroonobserver.com/p/vlando-len...

I would sacrifice being right for more Pattie

(Trial) Team List Takeaways BY DAN Team list Tuesday is back, and what a way to start the year. There’s curveballs throughout the team list named by the Milk, and they throw up more questions than a toddler with a curio…

Team list takeaways

sportress.org/2026/02/10/t...

Welcome to the 2026 season BY DAN Dust off the boots, wash your favourite beanie, get out your footy-watching-pants and find that remote you hurled into the fifth dimension last year. Rugby league is back baby, and this is t…

Our season preview, such that it is

sportress.org/2026/02/08/w...

How well do lower grade stats predict NRL performance? - The Rugby League Eye Test When I first started the Eye Test almost *checks notes* SIX YEARS?? ago, one of first things I had on my list of topics to investigate was how much of a relationship there was between lower grade stat...

NRL is back this weekend for 2026 and so is the Eye Test

First up is a look at the relationship between lower grade & first grade stats. Can lower grade output give us any indication of NRL performance & which metrics matter?

www.rugbyleagueeyetest.com/2026/02/05/h...

They're calling it the most wrong paragraph ever written

Six, Again: For the love of the game? BY DAN Does Peter V’Landys like rugby league? He and Andrew Abdo are currently pursuing rule changes. Again. No, wait. Again, again. Our take on them can be found here, but in short, they are…

ICYMI: our take on the rules prior to their confirmation yesterday

sportress.org/2026/01/14/s...

The Rules and Canberra: Ready for Hyperdrive? BY DAN Peter V’Landys has reached into the backpack and pulled out a return to the awful six-again rules of 2021. Look, I hate it. These rules were opposed, then scaled back, for good reason.…

The rule changes are terrible. But are they terrible for the Raiders?

sportress.org/2026/02/04/t...

Morgan Smithies: Raider For Now BY DAN Morgan Smithies will be a Raider until at least the end of 2027, per the Canberra Times. It resolves one of the most bizarrely long negotiations in recent memory. Canberra have been in discu…

Morgan's deal is done. For now.

sportress.org/2026/01/31/m...

With The Rainbow Serpent, Dick Roughsey shared the spirit of our country. His work is a gift to us all | Alexis Wright Miles Franklin-winner Alexis Wright pays tribute to the first book that visualised this powerful ancestral being from an Indigenous imagination

I often remember the Rainbow Serpent, which I adored as a kid, but as a kid I made no note then of the author and being older and more anxious now, I’ve long worried that perhaps it was a misappropriated story. How delightful to learn this morning that it wasn’t: www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...