Reward for Raiders for rare patience
SYDNEY: Canberra has built a squad of experienced finals performers despite never purchasing a proven representative player or old head from its NRL rivals.
It was not that long ago Ricky Stuart was having to plead with Canberra fans for patience. Now, he is rewarding them in bucketloads.
The Raiders will take on Cronulla tonight trying to qualify for two straight preliminary finals for the first time since Stuart was the club’s star player in the mid1990s.
When Stuart returned to Canberra as coach in 2014 he learned quickly he was going to have to do it the long way. James Tedesco, Michael Ennis, Josh Mansour and Michael Ennis all rejected — or in the case of Tedesco backflipped — on his approaches in the space of a few months.
‘‘I am not a patient person and I was asking for it because we had to do it another way here,’’ Stuart said yesterday.
‘‘We couldn’t just go out and buy rep players.
‘‘We had to produce our own and generate our own momentum.
‘‘I have said all along you need representative players, you need 100gamers, to have success in your performance. That’s what’s been building at the club.’’
In his seven seasons at the Raiders, Stuart did not buy a toptier representative player from an NRL rival until Corey HarawiraNaera arrived from Canterbury this year.
As has regularly been noted, he turned his attention to England where Canberra’s English secondrower Elliott Whitehead has been able to lure out the biggest band of Brits in years.
But Stuart’s talent is still homegrown.
Of the 36 players to have run out for Canberra this year, only 14 have played for another NRL club.
And only Dunamis Lui and Sia Soliola had played more than 40 games for other NRL clubs, with even Soliola arriving after five years in England.
It’s showing, with Joe Tapine to become the eighth member of their squad to play 100 games at the Raiders, giving them more club centurions than any of the other five remaining teams.
‘‘Continuity comes from playing regular games backtoback to get used to playing with each other,’’ Stuart said.
‘‘Others have grown into representative players and grown off the back of each other’s style of game here at the club.
‘‘That part of the journey — albeit it’s been a number of years — has been great to be a part of.
‘‘And now we have some great combinations.’’ — AAP