Canberra will have to pass the biggest test of their NRL season to further their revival when they meet star-studded competition leaders Melbourne.
The Raiders kept their faint finals hopes alive last week, finally winning a close game against St George Illawarra after a season littered with near misses.
After a post-Origin bye, the Storm welcome back half a dozen Queensland stars for Saturday's clash in Canberra, including the spine which broke NSW hearts - Billy Slater, Cameron Munster, Cooper Cronk and Cameron Smith.
Will Chambers and Tim Glasby round out the six Origin winners set to cause the Raiders headaches.
While ending a four-match losing run gave the Raiders' season a jolt, it came at a cost with star forward Josh Papalii suspended for a shoulder charge.
The Storm are an imposing task for Canberra, but coach Ricky Stuart believes it will give him an accurate gauge of his side's standing.
"We can use this as a great springboard into the back end of the season," Stuart said.
"We know we're a very good football team, we just haven't been executing.
"We haven't given ourselves the opportunity to get back to that football team I know we've got there.
"It's hidden at the moment and I'm looking forward to the moment it bounces out."
All too often this year the Raiders' electrifying attacking ability has been offset by costly mistakes.
Stuart said they would need to balance risk and opportunity to find a performance capable of challenging the Storm.
"We've got to take the opportunity but we've got to take less risk and that will create less error," he said.
The Storm can keep their distance from their rivals at the top of the ladder with a win, while the Raiders can't afford to lose any ground on the top eight, still two games adrift of the eighth-placed Dragons.
It's a vastly different set of circumstances from when the two sides last met in last year's preliminary final, a game in which Melbourne handed Raiders a painful 14-12 defeat.
"We've spoken about the position we're in," Stuart said.
"We were very clear of what's needed, it's just a matter of now executing it and putting it into play."
STATS THAT MATTER
* Melbourne have lost one away match this season, beaten by the Roosters 25-24 in golden point in Adelaide
* Canberra's worst winning percentage against any team is the Storm who they have beaten 11 times in their 38 encounters, or 28.9 per cent
* Melbourne have not lost back-to-back matches since the middle of 2015 - a streak of 54 games
Source: Fox Sports Stats
