"Teams improve and prepare for you and we have to, too. We've got to be better than last year because teams are hunting us now. Last year we were ambushing and surprising a few teams so it was always going to be a tougher season this year. It's very good education for a young bunch."
Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart
Round 10 2017. It was the ugliest, the most embarrassing, of the losses to date this season. A loss to a team that has won two matches in their last 35 games. A loss to a team last on the ladder, with just one win for the season. Yet it was a loss to a team that out-enthused and out-played the Raiders. Three losses in a row for Canberra. They're just two competition points outside the eight, but are six competition points away from the top four. After recent losses, coach Ricky Stuart has kept saying that the problems are easy to fix. Clearly, they're not easy to fix.
There's no point panicking if you're the coach. He's the one who must keep a level head. And he has a team playing without any confidence. And I think Ricky Stuart has learned some lessons about what to say and what not to say in press conferences. Don't expect to hear what he's saying to the players behind closed doors in a post match press conference. Which probably explains the lines we heard in the press conference. Things like the Raiders are not going to blow away teams like they did in 2016. And that the Raiders are now the hunted. That they can't surprise other teams, as they did last season.
Some of that's true. But there's something amiss with the way the Raiders are playing and there's something amiss with the attitude of the team on field.
In 2017, Ricky Stuart is clearly aiming to prepare his team to win the sorts of matches they lost to the Sharks and Storm in last year's finals campaign. He's been coaching them on how to win the close games, how to get in the grind. However, this year, they're not winning the close games, not so far. And there's not much point learning the grind for the finals, if you're not within cooee of a finals placing. It's a genuine question... do the Raiders have the squad to play this style? Because they certainly are not showing it at the moment. The conflict between the grind and the flamboyant aptitudes of the players seemed to be best summed up by the decision to take a shot at penalty goal in the first half, to go to a four point lead. The 2016 Raiders would not have done that. And it seems to just invite the opposition back into the contest. And that's promptly what happened.
The attitude? The Raiders surely should not be so complacent, so arrogant, that they felt they should simply turn up and beat the Knights. Not after the losses to the Sea Eagles and the Bulldogs. But they didn't look like they'd turned up to play yesterday. It was not a question of effort, not against the Knights. But I think it has now got to the point that confidence is down. It's a difficult balancing act, arrogance, confidence, complacency, respect for the opposition. And arrogance is not a bad thing if you translate the word as "confidence". But the magical things which a confident team could do last year are not coming off this year. There were a couple of instances from the match with the Knights which stuck in my mind. A Blake Austin flick pass over the sideline. A Junior Paulo pass out wide that goes over the sideline. Those passes fall into the hands of a player in green in 2016. Not in 2017.
I think it fundamentally comes down to not being patient and consistently committed enough to do the hard yards in the middle. Other teams are indeed preparing well for the Raiders. The opposition coaches now have a well developed manual on how to beat Canberra. So you see teams, even the team running last, successfully employ tactics like kicking to the sidelines to keep the ball out of the hands of Rapana and Leilua. Yesterday, for the first 10 minutes of the second half, the forwards rolled the sleeves up, the play makers played direct, and the Raiders looked good. But they didn't for the other 70 minutes. In the other 70 minutes, we saw things like Josh Hodgson repeatedly caught with the ball at dummy half. A platform in the forwards creates space for the playmakers, which allows the backs to do the magic. That's what's needed, in that order.
The other explanation for the attitude problem? It's the absence of competition for positions. The Raiders' depth has taken a severe hit with the loss of players like Paul Vaughan and Brenko Lee. It was salary cap pressure which forced Canberra to release those sorts of players. And they're showing their worth for other clubs now. But there are few, if any, players in the Mounties team putting real pressure on the first grade team. And as soon as a player is injured or suspended, there are not quality players to draw upon. Ricky Stuart has previously made much of the need for competition for a place in the team in every position. It's just not there, at the moment.
Stats that mattered? Well, the key one was six tries to three. The Knights had 55 per cent possession, and an 88 per cent completion rate. The Raiders completed at 69 per cent. The running metres were just about even (1321 for the Knights, 1331 for the Raiders). There weren't many kicking metres in the match, but the Knights outdid Canberra through constant kicking for the sidelines. The Knights actually missed more tackles than Canberra (38-30), but clearly not at the most critical stages. It was as simple as that.
Memorable moments? There weren't many for Canberra. Nick Cotric scored a double, good tries no doubt. But the most memorable things were the things of the sort I mentioned earlier. I'm still shaking my head at some of them.
Best performers?
Junior Paulo. 167 metres from 19 runs, 23 tackles, four offloads, one tackle break.
Sia Soliola. 111 metres from 13 runs, 33 tackles, one tackle break.
Nick Cotric. Two tries, 101 metres from 10 runs, two line breaks, seven tackle breaks.
Metre eaters: Junior Paulo 167 metres from 19 runs, Sia Soliola 111 metres from 13 runs, Jarrod Croker 109 metres from seven runs. It is worth noting that Jordan Rapana, usually one of the top players for running metres, made only 64 metres from nine runs. It shows how successful the Knights were in keeping the ball out of his hands through kicking.
Top tacklers: Josh Hodgson (54), Shannon Boyd (39), Sia Soliola and Elliott Whitehead (33).
My player ratings:
Jack Wighton 5
Nick Cotric 7
Jarrod Croker 7
Joey Leilua 5
Jordan Rapana 5
Blake Austin 5
Aidan Sezer 5
Junior Paulo 7
Josh Hodgson 6
Shannon Boyd 7
Joseph Tapine 6
Elliott Whitehead 6
Luke Bateman 1
Sia Soliola 7
Adam Clydsdale 3
Dunamis Lui 5
Clay Priest 5
Do you agree or disagree with the ratings? Let me know!
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