For as long as I have known, part of being a Raiders fan is the caution that comes with any kind of hope, joy or success that the club experiences. For every great win, marquee signing or outstanding season, there’s always been an underlying sense of fear, as if there’s a hazard on the horizon ready to bring everything undone. For the most part, this caution has been justified. The club has made the finals in consecutive seasons just once in the past seventeen years (19-20), despite producing squads that have been capable of achieving far more. From the Orford debacle in 2011, to ‘Cruisergate’ in 2013 and the absolute train wreck that was 2017, Raiders fans have become accustomed to watching teams that they believe in collapse in spectacular fashion. As my good friend Dave often says, life as a Raiders fan is meant to hurt and never get better.
However, despite the history of heartbreak, disappointment and despair, something about this current Raiders squad felt different. Built on a resolute defence and tough underbelly, Ricky Stuart’s squad created a very small gap between their best and their worst on a weekly basis. They won the games they were expected to win (20-3 record against bottom 8 sides in 19/20) and consistently took it to the other competition heavyweights when it mattered. While their execution wasn’t always perfect, it was incredibly rare to walk away after a Raiders game and feel as though the players hadn’t given their all for the jersey.
While the departure of John Bateman and Nick Cotric left some cause for concern, the return of Josh Hodgson, Bailey Simonsson, Emre Guler and Corey Horsburgh from long term injuries, alongside the improvement of young players like Hudson Young and Tom Starling had Raiders fans licking their lips for the 2021 season. In my season preview for Beyond the Fence, I predicted a top two finish for the Raiders and stated that scraping into the bottom half of the top eight was the worst-case scenario for this team. I could not have been more wrong. Such was my expectation for this season, I sulked for two hours after the Sharks win in Round 2 because I didn’t think we looked as good as I thought we could.
While some fans love to condemn anyone who criticises their team during a rough trot, I have never been one of those fans and have no interest in sitting around saying “just believe in Ricky” as the club explodes from within. So without further ado, let’s try and unpack where everything has gone wrong in the last nine weeks.
As stated previously, the Raiders success over the last two seasons has been built on resilience, tough defence and enough individual brilliance sprinkled in to keep the scoreboard ticking over. They always won the race for a 50/50 ball, they turned up in numbers to snuff out half chances and they rallied in the face of adversity. Often times, the Raiders would lose a key player to the sin bin or injury and rather than fall in a heap, they would improve.
In the last nine weeks, the Milk haven’t displayed a single semblance of any of these traits. Every single week, it’s just a waiting game to see which Jenga block will be the one that makes the tower collapse. Some weeks it’s an injury to an outside back, others it’s as simple as a single knock on or penalty, but every week has a provided the Raiders with some form of adversity and every week the Raiders have stared it in the face and folded. Throughout this losing run, Ricky Stuart has enjoyed leaning on the excuse that “the bounce of the ball” isn’t going our way or that ‘luck’ isn’t on our side. My response to Ricky would be; the bounce of the ball isn’t what’s stopping Curtis Scott from diving on a loose ball in the dying minutes of the Knights loss. Luck isn’t what’s causing Caleb Aekins to be out of position for almost every try we concede. In rugby league, the good players and teams make their own luck through their effort and application. Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad making four unlikely try saving tackles in one match earlier this season wasn’t luck, it was a player that was willing to do anything to help the team succeed. In this current Raiders side, there are very few players who are willing to do the same.
So where did the resilience and toughness that made the Raiders so great go overnight? If I had the answer to that, there’d probably be a spot for me on the coaching staff. As an outsider looking in, it’s difficult to pinpoint. On one hand, there’s been personnel changes that have affected it to an extent. The season ending injury to Charnze in Round 5 has been crippling to the Raiders defence and I don’t think it’s a complete coincidence that the Raiders won just 46% of their games without John Bateman in 2019/20 (74% with John). However, there’s clearly an issue with the attitude of the playing group that’s much bigger than a couple of personnel changes and the George Williams, Josh Hodgson and Kirsten Tapine sagas are all evidence of that.
It almost goes without saying, but Ricky Stuart is an incredibly emotional coach. He’s openly one of the worst losers in Australian sport and seemingly takes losses far too personally. Almost every decision he’s made this season in regard to selection and minutes has felt as if it’s been made from an emotional standpoint. Dropping Josh Papalii and Joe Tapine, attempting to take the captaincy off Hodgson, reinstating Hodgson in the starting line-up after he complained in the media, exiling Hudson Young. Much like the maligned PVL rule changes, almost all of these decisions have been made with no logical process. It’s no wonder that players such as Tapine, Hodgson and Papalii are disgruntled, when their treatment from Stuart has been so irrational. Furthermore, the constant media reports from talking heads such as Kent and Hooper, which are blatantly sourced from Stuart, do nothing to help the morale of the playing group. How can you expect your players to trust you or play for you when all of your private conversations are ending up on NRL360? It’s been embarrassing for the club and turned the season into a soap opera.
Aside from the painful attitudinal issues, the Raiders have a number of glaring problems in their on-field make up which have no immediate fix. Their pack, which I believed would be the best in the competition, has been outplayed every week and looks far too slow for the new rules. The most disappointing aspect has been that promising young players like Emre Guler and Corey Horsburgh have both struggled with the speed, while the club still seems unsure about Hudson Young’s best position. I had incredibly high hopes for all three of these guys, especially Young, but their performances this season have me worried. After a great first month, Ryan James has been quite lethargic around the field (3 runs for 25m, 7 for 44m and 8 for 62m in the last three weeks), while Ryan Sutton hasn’t looked quite right since his elbow injury. As a whole, the pack looks unfit, ill-disciplined and incapable of defending multiple sets in a row without leaking points. Of course, none of this has been helped by Ricky Stuart’s truly awful bench rotation, which has somehow worsened since I last wrote. With Havilii, Lui and Soliola off contract this season, as well as James potentially having an option, it will be interesting to see what decisions the club makes in regard to the pack moving forward.
In the backline, there are so many issues that I don’t have the words to dive into all of them. Caleb Aekins is completely out of his depth in first grade, his positional play and defence is incredibly poor and his ability with ball in hand is limited. Bailey Simonsson is a one step forward and two steps back prospect. His yardage has been much improved, and he’s had some really encouraging moments but he’s full of mind-numbing errors on both sides of the ball (that 20m restart v Melbourne…). The Sebastian “SEABASS” Kris experience was fun for a month but I’m not sure he’s a long-term option at centre. I like his enthusiasm and game smarts but his lateral movement in defence leaves a lot to be desired and he’s been given a bath by his opposition centre three weeks in a row (old man Will Hopoate, Reimis Smith and a 17-year-old are hardly match-ups you want to be losing). I’ve actually liked parts of what Curtis Scott has done this season and I’ve enjoyed the incentive to give him more early ball in recent weeks. In saying that, Curtis Scott being low on the list of issues in this team says more about how bad others have been rather than Curtis’ form. Jack Wighton is looking more lost by the week. He’s either passing too early to engage the defensive line or tucking the ball under his wing and running it. He’s had just five try contributions and 15 errors for the season. He’s always been a unique talent but as our marquee guy, I really want to see him try and impose himself on the game more. I said it after six weeks and I’ll say it again, I have no idea why he is still just chained to a corner on the left side. We don’t have the attacking talent on both sides of the field that we once had; we need a creator like Wighton to be a threat all over the park.
The worst part about all these problems, is that I’m not sure there is a solution to many or any of them in the short term. I would play Simonsson at fullback and Valemei on the left wing, but that doesn’t move the needle a great deal. Papalii and Tapine returning will help a lot, but it’s likely their impact will again be nullified by Stuart’s rotations. Ultimately, until the attitude and morale of the squad improves, minor personnel changes will do nothing to change the results. There is more than enough talent across this squad to still sneak into the eight, but with their current trajectory I think it’s more likely they finish in the bottom four.
In the grand scheme of things, if the worst thing in my life is that the rugby league team I like isn’t playing very well, then I have very little to complain about. But as a human being with feelings and emotions, I can’t help but be shattered to have watched this squad go so close to winning a title, only to meekly throw it away like this. Thanks for reading.