Chaos in Canberra as NRL miracle blows minds

Just when it seemed Canberra coach Ricky Stuart was ready to blow up, his team produced the biggest miracle of the year so far.

The Raiders have scored the best try of the season to steal victory from the jaws of defeat against the Sharks in Canberra.

Trailing 20-18 in the final two minutes, just about every player touched the ball as the Raiders threw it around on the fifth tackle and went 55 metres to score a miracle try.

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Canberra had plenty go against them in the second half as Hudson Young became the first victim of the NRL’s sin bin crack down and Ricky Stuart was seething on the sideline.

But the jeers turned to cheers at GIO Stadium as Seb Kris scored the winner to send Stuart and the home crowd into raptures as they clinched a gutsy 24-20 victory.

That’s not a try, that’s a miracle.

Young was binned in the 58th minute, with the scores locked at 18-18, for a high tackle that wasn’t picked up in real time by referee Todd Smith.

The Bunker reported it and Young was marched for a tackle that simply wasn’t a sin bin just seven days ago.

The Raiders struck first through Englishman Matt Nicholson before Mawene Hiroti hit back for the Sharks.

Canberra retook the lead when Hudson Young scored in the 23rd minute but Briton Nikora then crashed over to lock up the scores again.

The backrowers then both bagged doubles before the break to make it 18-18 at halftime.

There were plenty of opportunities in the second half but neither team could convert before the Sharks took the lead with a two-pointer while Young was in the bin.

Then just when everybody was getting ready for Stuart to blow a gasket in his press conference, Kris scored with just a few seconds left on the clock.

Here are the biggest talking points out of the match

BATTLE OF THE SECOND-ROWERS

It was tit for tat between two of the game’s best try-scoring second-rowers with Canberra’s Hudson Young and Cronulla’s Briton Nikora both bagging a first-half double.

Young scored his first try off an ad-lib grubber from Tom Starling after spotting some space and urging his hooker to put it through for him.

“Hudson Young is very athletic and creative on the edges and that’s probably why Will Kennedy and the right edge of the Sharks weren’t in position to save that try – because of the instinct and reaction of Hudson Young,” Fox League’s expert analyst Cooper Cronk said.

Nikora responded just three minutes later with an effort that Michael Ennis summed up as “sheer strength” with the second-rower barging through three Raiders players to force his way over the line.

“He is a powerful, powerful man on the right edge of the Cronulla Sharks… it doesn’t matter if it’s against the grain, on the outside shoulder or back underneath, when Nikora puts it together he is hard to stop,” Cronk said in commentary.

“He’s courageous too – he never misses his assignment.”

The Raiders found themselves in prime field position off the back of a Sharks error and Young struck again thanks to a late offload from Seb Kris.

But Nikora hit back with some serious skill to level the scores before half time. Nikora put a grubber in for himself and then kicked it a couple more times before grounding the ball.

“This was the last thing I had on my mind – that he was going to kick three times and score. That is very good control of the ball,” Cronk said.

“I’m not sure he can do that again but that was awesome.”

Outside of his two tries, Nikora had a quiet night with just 37 running metres from seven runs, but he did make 28 tackles.

Young’s night took a turn in the second half when he was sin-binned for a high shot but overall it was an impressive performance from the Raiders star. He finished with two linebreaks, two offloads, six tackle busts, 106 running metres and 22 tackles to go with his two tries.

CRACKDOWN ON SHOW

There was plenty of angst coming into this round that match officials would overuse the sin bin after they failed to take action against four players who made high tackles in round four.

Jarome Luai, Reed Mahoney, Tom Gilbert and Jordan Riki all avoided a trip to the bin but accepted fines or suspensions for their offences post match, prompting a reaction from the NRL’s top brass.

Head of football Graham Annesley wrote to clubs and confirmed he was unhappy that those four players were not sent to the sin bin after making “direct forceful contact with the head/neck of opponents”.

“Over the weekend, we identified direct, forceful contact to the head with no mitigation,” NRL CEO Andrew Abdo joined the chorus on NRL 360.

Young felt the full force of the new focus, but the Raiders did remarkably well to keep the Sharks from crossing the line during Young’s time off the field.

HERO HIROTI

Sharks centre Mawene Hiroti had played just four top grade games across the last three years and only 25 in his career coming into tonight’s match where he replaced injured regular starter Kayal Iro but the 26-year-old looked like a star at times.

Playing inside Ronaldo Mulitalo, Hiroti scored a slashing try, made several powerful stops in defence and ran 18 times for 200 metres.

For his part, Mulitalo covered 209 metres from 21 runs. Both were topped by massive front rower Addin Fonua-Blake who powered through 211 metres.

WEEKES BOMBED

Kaeo Weekes endured difficult nights under the high ball against both the Sea Eagles and the Cowboys in Canberra’s two most recent outings and things didn’t look to be getting any better when he spilled his first bomb inside two minutes tonight. He dropped another later in the half and never looked confident when contesting the ball.

Canberra coach Ricky Stuart is an unabashed fan of the speedy fullback, but Weekes must be looking over his shoulder at the prodigious Chevy Stewart, who scored a try and racked up almost 200 run metres in the NSW Cup last week.

Weekes did show how special he is with the ball in hand however, slicing through the Sharks defence and burning his opposite number Will Kennedy for speed with a 40 metre run to the line in the first half, only for the try to be disallowed after the bunker found Nicholson had impeded Braydon Trindall’s ability to stop Weekes.

Originally published as Chaos in Canberra as NRL miracle blows minds